steinbring

From the Article:

Wong’s Wok, a Chinese chain restaurant with roots in Milwaukee, has shuttered its final location. The closure marks the end of a 45-year run for the family-owned restaurant, which operated as many as 13 locations at its peak.

Since its inception in 1979, Wong’s Wok has operated as a fast food concept with a focus on traditional Cantonese recipes such as egg foo young, sweet-and-sour chicken and lo mein. The takeout-focused restaurant also served several varieties of fried rice, sesame chicken, crab rangoon and more.

The last remaining Wong’s Wok, 3702 S. 27th St., was open as recently as early January, according to online reviews. As of Monday, however, the building has been stripped of its signage. A note posted in the drive-thru window reads: “restaurant closed.”

The restaurant chain, originally founded by Edward Chin, has been passed down through multiple generations. Chin’s daughter, Jennifer Norvik, is the current business owner.

In addition to its brick-and-mortar locations, Wong’s Wok was a regular vendor at Summerfest. The restaurant served fried rice, sesame chicken, crab rangoon and other crowd-favorites throughout the annual festival. Summerfest has not yet announced a full list of vendors for the 2024 event.

The proprietor is now seeking a new tenant for the southside restaurant space. The standalone building shares a parking lot with a strip mall containing a number of businesses including Dollar Tree, an auto parts store and several others. The building is also home to a Chinese Buffet restaurant. A third Chinese restaurant, Panda Express, is located just north of the property.

From the Article:

Go deep into motorcycle culture with Mama Tried, a sprawling show of custom and collectible bikes named for a Merle Haggard song.

The weekend kicks off on Feb. 23 at Fiserv Forum with Flat Out Friday, the “world’s largest indoor flat track race” on a surface coated with Dr Pepper syrup. (It adds traction, like a sticky movie theater floor.)

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the homegrown show, which runs Feb. 24-25 at the Eagles Ballroom.

“People come into town from all over the world to spend the whole week doing motorcycle-related parties and stuff like that,” says co-founder Scott Johnson.

From the Article:

The City of Milwaukee celebrated the start of early voting for the spring election with the opening of a new voting center at the intersection of N. 60th St. and W. Capitol Dr.

The new location at 6001 W. Capitol Dr., replaces the early voting site at the Midtown Center Shopping Complex. City officials decided to move the site in 2023 after an Atlanta-based firm bought the building, tripling cost of the city’s lease and reducing the space offered for the voting site, as Urban Milwaukee reported.

Losing the Midtown site without a replacement would have been a blow to voting access for Milwaukee residents, particularly those living in the predominantly Black neighborhoods that surround the site.

And a blow to turnout in Milwaukee. “This is the busiest early voting center in the Midwest,” said Claire Woodall, director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.

The new site is located in two-story building that was originally a bank. It can be accessed by several bus routes, including Route 60, which runs north and south along 60th Street, and the RedLine, which runs east and west along Capitol Drive. The building is also ADA accessible and has parking for approximately 90 vehicles.

“We’re hoping that this site will be more convenient than our previous site,” Woodall said. The city is planning to be in the location at least through 2025.

From the Article:

Last winter, a Milwaukee police officer walked into Axel’s. Shouting over the dive bar’s thumping music, he told underage patrons to leave the bar immediately.

“This is your one chance,” he said, holding up a finger.

A few seconds later, more than three dozen patrons stood up and filed out of the building. The incident, which was captured on video and distributed across multiple social media platforms, was just one of several cases of underage drinking found at the tavern throughout the past several years.

The pattern captured the attention of the Licenses Committee, which on Jan. 23 recommended a 20-day suspension for the East Side tavern, 2859 N. Oakland Ave.

But just minutes before the full Common Council was to vote on the matter Tuesday, area Alderman Jonathan Brostoff recommended the committee change the suspension to a warning letter — the tavern’s fourth in five years — during a special committee meeting.

From the Article:

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, voiced skepticism Wednesday about the possibility of the Republican-controlled Legislature passing new legislative maps that Evers proposed.

Evers was asked about Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu floating the possibility earlier in the day of the Senate voting on the Evers maps. The Assembly would also consider passing the Evers maps, said Republican Speaker Robin Vos’ spokesperson Angela Joyce.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Evers told reporters. But when asked if he would sign his maps if the Legislature passed them unchanged, Evers said, “Why not?”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is weighing maps submitted by Evers and others after it ruled in December that the current Republican-drawn maps were unconstitutional.

From the Article:

Senate Republicans are considering adopting legislative maps drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers with no changes, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu told the Wisconsin State Journal Wednesday.

While the maps Evers proposed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court could dramatically reduce — and even reverse — Republicans’ legislative majority, GOP lawmakers have found the governor’s maps to be more favorable for them than the other three Democrat-supported alternatives before the court.

In response, Evers told reporters, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Asked whether he’d sign the proposal into law if his maps remain unchanged, he said, “Why not?”

LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, later told reporters that Senate Republicans will consider Evers’ maps along with other alternatives in a closed discussion Wednesday. Any action to pass the governor’s maps would likely be taken in the next two weeks, LeMahieu said.

From the Article:

As a legal battle over witness addresses on absentee ballots heads towards the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Republican lawmakers say they’re hoping to settle the debate over the definition of “address” before the court does.

A bill authored by Wisconsin Reps. Donna Rozar, R-Marshfield; Scott Krug, R-Nekoosa; and Sen. Cory Tomczyk, R-Mosinee, would specify that a witness’s address must contain the person’s name, house number, street name, municipality, state and ZIP code.

It would also bar clerks from filling in missing address information regardless if they can identify where that person lives. If a clerk — or anyone other than the voter — corrects the address, they could face fines of up to $500 and up to 30 days in jail, under the legislation.

Current law states that a witness must print their name and address on the absentee ballot envelope, known as a witness certificate, but doesn’t spell out what constitutes an address.

Krug said the bill is a response to lawsuits on absentee witness signatures working their way through state courts. The most recent ruling came from Dane County Circuit Court Judge Ryan Nilsestuen, who ordered the Wisconsin Elections Commission to tell local clerks that absentee ballots with witness addresses missing things like a ZIP code or municipality must be counted and that clerks can correct them if they can confirm where a witness lives.

“This is where the definitions and guidance and ideas should come from, is the Legislature passing them and the governor signing them into law, so the courts don’t have to guess,” Krug said.

The Dane County lawsuit was filed by the League of Women Voters and youth organizing group Rise, Inc. They argued state law is vague on what witness address information needs to be included on ballots and clerks around Wisconsin are using different standards.

A separate federal lawsuit filed in October by a national Democratic law firm argues the state law requiring witness signatures on absentee ballot envelopes violates the federal Voting Rights Act. That case is ongoing.

From the Article:

Gov. Tony Evers signed two bills, now 2023 Wisconsin Act 92 and 2023 Wisconsin Act 93, on Friday that will release long-awaited pay raises to employees of the University of Wisconsin System.

The 4% raises for about 35,000 UW employees were included in the 2023-24 budget that was passed by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by Evers. However, they were held up last year by Republican lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Employment Relations (JCOER) as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) decided to use the raises as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the UW System over diversity, equity and inclusion issues as well as funding.

The UW System and Republicans came to a deal in December 2023 under which lawmakers agreed to finally release the pay raises and fund some infrastructure projects for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Wisconsin schools, while the System agreed to freeze DEI hiring and realign some positions.

“All our UW faculty, staff, and workers should be treated with dignity and respect,” Evers said in a statement about signing the raises. “While I’m glad these well-deserved pay increases will finally be in the hands of the UW building trades employees who’ve earned them, these workers never should have had their wages held up for political games in the first place.”

The actions by Republican lawmakers regarding the pay raises also became one of the subjects of a lawsuit filed by Evers in October 2023. In the ongoing lawsuit, Evers argues that the actions by lawmakers constitute “legislative vetoes” that are “unconstitutional and unlawful.”

“Republicans’ obstruction of basic functions of government have harmed tens of thousands of people across our state — folks, that’s wrong,” Evers said in his statement. “Wisconsinites expect government to work for them, not against them, and for elected officials to do their jobs and get things done. I will continue to fight every effort by Republicans in the Legislature to unconstitutionally and unlawfully obstruct our administration from doing the right thing for Wisconsin.”

From the Article:

The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) is only running roughly half of the battery electric buses (BEBs) it purchased for the new bus rapid transit (BRT) service.

After a recall of the buses in August by the manufacturer, NovaBus, the transit system is still only operating five of them daily, according to David Locher, enhanced transit manager for MCTS. Ideally, there would be nine running every day, he told the Milwaukee Common Council‘s Public Works Committee on Jan. 24.

The transit system ordered 11 BEBs from NovaBus, a Canadian subsidiary of Volvo Group, to operate on the Connect 1, a new nine-mile bus rapid transit service running east and west between Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa. The BRT service is the first of its kind for MCTS. The service cost $55 million to develop and employs dedicated bus lanes, elevated bus stations and transit technologies like off-bus fare collection and BEBs. Currently, however, the majority of buses operating on Connect 1 are clean-diesel buses like those being operated throughout the system.

MCTS also ordered 4 BEBs to operate on other fixed-bus routes as a pilot for a broader electrification of the fleet. Shortly after the Connect 1 launched, the company announced it was exiting the U.S. manufacturing market, with plans to close its manufacturing and delivery facility in Plattsburgh, New York by 2025.

So far, MCTS has received 11 BEBs from NovaBus. Delivery of the remaining four buses is expected this year.

On June 1, MCTS launched Connect 1. Before the month was over, the MCTS needed to replace a battery unit on one of the BEBs. On Aug. 24, all of the transit system’s BEBs were pulled from the road for a full recall and replacement of the batteries by NovaBus. During the recall, nine buses were sent away and all have returned with new batteries.

From the Article:

Two consultants hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority said redistricting plans submitted by the Republican-controlled Legislature do “not deserve further consideration” by justices as part of an ongoing lawsuit over the state’s political maps.

Their report on six map proposals said plans submitted by Gov. Tony Evers, Democrats and academics are “tilted toward the Republicans” but are competitive enough that “the party that wins the most votes will win the most seats.”

The findings, released to the court Thursday night, struck at the heart of an argument long used by Republicans that Wisconsin’s “political geography” favors their party because Democrats are generally clustered in larger cities. Wisconsin’s current legislative maps, first drawn by Republicans in 2011 and redrawn in 2021, have helped the GOP cement lopsided majorities in the Assembly and Senate, even in years when Democratic candidates performed well statewide.

But University of California, Irvine political scientist Bernard Grofman and Carnegie Mellon University political scientist Jonathan Cervas told the court that the maps submitted to the court contradicted that claim.

“To put it simply, in Wisconsin, geography is not destiny,” they wrote.

The report argues map proposals from every party except the Legislature and voters represented by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty are able to “improve on traditional good government criteria compared to the current map and manage to create plans with modest levels of partisan bias.”

Also, the consultants wrote, the Legislature’s plan and the plan submitted by WILL “are partisan gerrymanders” from a social science perspective.

The other four plans, the report said, are similar on most criteria, and more competitive than the GOP maps. The consultants did not endorse a specific map but told the court they were prepared to improve map proposals if justices choose.

Shortly after the report was released, Evers called it an important step in the process for finding new maps.

“The days of Wisconsinites living under some of the most gerrymandered maps in the country are numbered,” Evers said.

From the Article:

A Dane County judge has ordered the Wisconsin Elections Commission to create new rules that allow local clerks to accept absentee ballots with missing witness address information.

The move could lead to more votes being counted in this year’s elections compared to in 2022. An attorney for the Republican-controlled state Legislature plans to appeal the ruling.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Ryan Nilsestuen issued the ruling as part of a permanent injunction Tuesday. The order requires the commission to rescind guidance it sent to clerks in September stating the agency could no longer advise clerks on whether or not to accept absentee ballots with incomplete address information written on ballot envelopes by a voter’s witness.

In it’s place, Nilsestuen’s order requires the commission to notify clerks that ballots cannot be rejected if witness addresses are missing things like a ZIP code or municipality. It also states that witness addresses marked “same as voter” or “ditto” must be accepted if that person lives at the same residence as the voter.

“The right to vote is one of our most important, if not the most important, right,” Nilsestuen said. “And this furthers that.”

The injunction wasn’t unexpected. On Jan. 3, Nislestuen, a former chief legal counsel for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, issued preliminary rulings on the witness address issue in cases brought by the League of Women Voters and the national youth organizing group Rise, Inc. At that time, he said rejecting absentee ballots due to incomplete witness addresses violates the federal Civil Rights act of 1964 and that the definition of an address should mean “a place where the witness can be communicated with.”

From the Article:

One of the Third Ward’s oldest buildings that last year was a prospect for potential demolition on Wednesday was donated to the nonprofit Milwaukee Preservation Alliance, which intends to preserve and restore it.

The donation resolves a preservation debate over the historic tavern at 266 E. Erie St., parts of which date to 1884. Milwaukee officials last year rejected General Capital Group and Joseph Property Development’s application to demolish the structure. The developers said its condition made a restoration financially impossible, and that it would essentially require a full reconstruction.

After the city of Milwaukee in September rejected the demolition application, members of the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance reached out to see if they could help, said executive director Emma Rudd. Those executive board members, including Peter Zanghi and Claude Krawczyk, worked primarily with Linda Gorens-Levey of General Capital, and reached the agreement for the developers to donate the building to the alliance to be preserved, Rudd said.

“It aligns perfectly with our mission,” she said. “At the end of the day, this is something we were willing to take on that not many would.”

The alliance is prepared to first stabilize the building, stopping further water leakage through its roof, and building scaffolding to brace an exterior brick wall that had been shifting. The long-term restoration will require fundraising and further planning, Rudd said, and will be an extensive effort. The funding for that work would include private donations and potential historic tax credits.

Beyond its deteriorating interior and roof, the building’s foundations will require extensive repair or replacement. An exterior wall will have to be taken apart and rebuild brick-by-brick, Rudd said.

“This is a beautiful, rich historic building that needs love from the ground up,” she said. “We want to use this building not only as an opportunity to promote our mission, but to use it for educational purposes, to see preservation as it happens."

A future use has not been identified for the restored building, Rudd said.

The building is notable because it is among fewer than 10 that survived the 1892 fire that wiped out much of the Third Ward. Its more recent history also includes housing the Wreck Room Saloon, a popular gathering space for the LGBTQ community.

It was most recently a Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design student union before a fire forced its closure in 2013. General Capital and Joseph Property acquired the building in 2014.