A number of very significant health insurance protections for families and children take effect today, on the six-month anniversary of the health care reform act. That law, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), includes the following reforms, which will curb some of the worst excesses of the insurance...
Poverty and income figures for 2009 that were released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau provide additional evidence of the economic pain that the Great Recession has inflicted on families across the nation. In some respects, such as median household income, that toll has been even heavier in Wisconsin, yet Wisconsin continues to be a...
For those following the issue of whether the two male juvenile facilities can be consolidated, there is a pretty clear statement in the Department of Corrections budget submission anticipating that consolidation will occur during the next biennium. The proposal includes an increase in the daily rate charged to counties for JCI...
As of now, 237 jurisdictions have requested and received extensions to implement regulations that comply with the requirement of the Adam Walsh Act or the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). Extensions have been granted through July, 2011, and as of now only three states (Delaware, Florida, and Ohio) have...
The National Juvenile Justice Network is presenting a webinar titled “Finding Opportunities for Reform During Difficult Fiscal Times” on Thursday, September 23 at 12:30 p.m. CDT. The webinar is based on the recent publication The Real Costs and Benefits of Change: Finding Opportunities for Reform During Difficult Fiscal Times and covers...
Today the U.S. Census Bureau updated its Current Population Survey (CPS) dataset with new information on poverty, income, and health insurance. As was widely expected, there’s been a large jump in the number of Americans living in poverty. The Wisconsin Council on Children and Families has done some rapid-response number crunching since...
Wisconsin continues its decade-long trend of having fewer state and local employees than the national average, according to a new analysis by the Wisconsin Budget Project. Recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that Wisconsin has 4.4 percent fewer state and local government employees per capita in 2009 than the national...
The federal health care reform law contains a variety of different measures to raise funding to offset the costs of expanding access to health care. One of those measures, which is now under attack, is expected to increase tax revenue by $17.1 billion over the next ten years by improving the ability of the IRS to keep track of business...
As universal public 4-year-old kindergarten (4K) continues to expand across the state, many are not aware that 4K has a history going back over 160 years. The first kindergarten in the United States was founded in Watertown, Wisconsin in 1856, shortly after the first “kindergarten” was opened in Germany in 1837 by Friedrich Fröebel.
This Sunday, Sept. 12, is National Grandparents Day, an appropriate time to consider the crucial and growing role grandparents are playing in caring for America’s kids, and the economic challenges they face in providing that care. • 4.5 million children lived in their grandparents’ home in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Buresu.• In...
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