MADISON, Wis. (AP) - While tiny houses have been attractive for those wanting to downsize or simplify their lives for financial or environmental reasons, there’s another population benefiting from the small-dwelling movement: the homeless.
There’s a growing effort across the nation from advocates and religious groups to build these compact buildings because they are cheaper than a traditional large-scale shelter, help the recipients socially because they are built in communal settings and are environmentally friendly due to their size.
“You’re out of the elements, you’ve got your own bed, you’ve got your own place to call your own,” said Harold “Hap” Morgan, who is without a permanent home in Madison. “It gives you a little bit of self-pride: This is my own house.”
He’s in line for a 99-square-foot house built through the nonprofit Occupy Madison Build, or OM Build, run by former organizers with the Occupy movement. The group hopes to create a cluster of tiny houses like those in Olympia, Wash., and Eugene and Portland, Ore.
Many have been built with donated materials and volunteer labor, sometimes from the people who will live in them. Most require residents to behave appropriately, avoid drugs and alcohol and help maintain the properties.
Still, sometimes neighbors have not been receptive. Linda Brown, who can see the proposed site for Madison’s tiny houses from her living room window, said she worries about noise and what her neighbors would be like.
“There have been people who have always been associated with people who are homeless that are unsavory types of people,” she said.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - The Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s chief legal counsel left his job last week, just two days after the public release of an email he sent four years ago joking about legalizing prostitution as a way to increase tourism or provide jobs for people on welfare.
The email from John J. Schulze Jr. was among the 28,000 pages of documents collected as part of an investigation into illegal campaign work by former aides and associates of Gov. Scott Walker when he was Milwaukee County executive.
The emails were released on Feb. 19. Schulze left his job at DOT, which he held since May 2013, two days later on Friday, Feb. 21, department spokeswoman Peg Schmitt said Tuesday. Madison weekly newspaper Isthmus first reported the departure.
“It came to our attention last week that an email sent by a Department of Transportation employee prior to his joining the administration contained inappropriate and offensive content,” Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said. “The email is in poor taste and there is no room for this poor conduct in Governor Walker’s administration.”
Evenson referred questions about whether Schulze resigned or was fired to Schmitt at DOT. Schmitt declined to comment on that, saying it was a personnel issue. Personnel records show he made $109,000 in the job.
A person who answered Schulze’s home phone said he was not available to comment and hung up before a message could be left.
Schulze sent the email in March 2010 to a variety of Walker campaign and county workers, including campaign manager Keith Gilkes and deputy chief of staff Kelly Rindfleisch. The email contained a made-up press release from 1998 in which Schulze joked about legalizing prostitution as a tourist attraction in the Wisconsin Dells or as a way to provide work for people transitioning off of welfare.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - The Republican Governors Association said Tuesday that Democrat Mary Burke’s comments criticizing Gov. Scott Walker on the issue of campaigning while on state time can’t be taken seriously because an adviser on her staff was convicted of illegal campaign work.
Burke is challenging Walker this year as he runs for re-election.
On Monday, Burke said Walker set a “low bar for campaign ethics and as governor” in reaction to the release of 28,000 pages of documents in an investigation into illegal campaign work by former aides and associates when he was Milwaukee County executive.
RGA spokesman Jon Thompson said that Burke’s attacks aren’t valid because her campaign employs someone who was convicted of illegally soliciting campaign donations on state time.
Tanya Bjork works as Burke’s political adviser. She pleaded no contest in 2005 to misdemeanor counts of fraudulently entering computer data and illegally soliciting campaign donations on state property while working for former Democratic state Sen. Brian Burke, of Milwaukee.
After her convictions Burke went on to work for then-Gov. Jim Doyle as his national liaison and as a senior adviser for President Barack Obama’s Wisconsin campaigns in both 2008 and 2012.
“Before Mary Burke preaches about ethical standards, she needs to take a good long look in the mirror,” Thompson said.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A Wisconsin state lawmaker said Tuesday that municipalities should have the final say on whether roundabouts are built on state and county highways, saying local officials are in the best position to say whether they are needed.
Wisconsin is seen as a national leader in using the European-style traffic circles, building an estimated 280 in about two decades on state and local roads. Another 90 are planned over the next three years, according to the state Department of Transportation.
For Rep. David Craig, R-Big Bend, the buildout may be going too far. Craig testified before the Assembly Committee on Transportation in support of his own bill to steer control back to local governments.
“I think that the DOT is over-utilizing them and putting them in places where they are just not workable,” Craig said in an interview. “Whether that’s because it’s too much of a hassle to negotiate them or the traffic count is too high, it’s a combination of those problems.”
A state engineer spoke against veto power for local communities, saying the roundabouts have cut crashes.
“We started doing roundabouts because Wisconsin back in the late 1990s (was) identified as having an above average crash problem at intersections,” said Jerry Zogg, a WisDOT Chief Roadway Standards and Methods Engineer. “We needed to figure out a way to have intersection crash rates (down) in Wisconsin.”
A WisDOT study last year found they reduced severe crashes in Wisconsin by 38 percent, although they increased less serious “fender benders” - perhaps by motorists unsure how to negotiate them - by 12 percent.
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