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Walmart, the largest retailer in the United States, is no longer selling Milwaukee Tool-branded gloves on its online marketplace  — responding to allegations that a subcontractor for the Brookfield, Wisconsin-based tool company relied on forced Chinese prison labor to manufacture certain models of gloves. 

“We looked into the allegations regarding the gloves in question, and we made a decision to de-list those from the marketplace,” Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart’s chief sustainability officer, told shareholders during a virtual meeting on May 31, according to a transcript reviewed by Wisconsin Watch.

In a follow up letter to a shareholder, a Walmart official confirmed that the company removed the gloves from its third-party platform, blocked future sales and does not sell the branded gloves in its stores or on its website.

“Walmart does not tolerate involuntary prison labor in its supply chain, even when allowed by local law,” Blair Cromwell, a Walmart spokesperson, told Wisconsin Watch in an email. “Our Standards for Suppliers prohibit it. We find such allegations very concerning and take action to address them.”

The confirmation to shareholders came months after Chinese exile Shi Minglei, who now lives in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, launched a public campaign to pressure Milwaukee Tool to stop sourcing gloves allegedly made under grueling conditions at Chishan Prison in China’s central Hunan Province — and to urge giant retailers such as Walmart, Amazon, and The Home Depot to stop selling the gloves or helping third parties do so. 

Shi alleges her husband, imprisoned human rights activist Cheng Yuan, has been forced to use a sewing machine to produce goods at the prison for up to 12 hours a day. Shi said she could not verify he was making Milwaukee Tool products but said she heard from former prisoners of Milwaukee Tool’s production at the prison. 

Walmart confirmed its removal of the gloves weeks after Wisconsin Watch investigation found additional evidence that Chishan prisoners were paid pennies to make work gloves bearing the iconic brand of Milwaukee Tool, a company with a nearly 100-year history in Wisconsin.

A supplier for Milwaukee Tool subcontracted work to the prison, two former prisoners told Wisconsin Watch. A self-identified salesperson of the supplier, Shanghai Select Safety Products, said it manufactured the majority of Milwaukee Tool’s work gloves. And regulatory filings show Shanghai Select was contracted to manufacture “Performance Gloves” for a subsidiary of Milwaukee Tool’s parent company.

Lee Ming-che, a renowned human rights activist who spent nearly five years in Chishan Prison, verified four types of Milwaukee Tool gloves he made while earning the equivalent of about 48 cents a day during 90-plus hour work weeks: Free-Flex, Demolition, Performance and Winter Performance.

Milwaukee Tool has not responded to Wisconsin Watch’s questions about how it investigates allegations of human rights abuses within its supply chain, but it says it has “found no evidence to support the claims being made.”

“Milwaukee Tool regularly conducts a complete and thorough review of our global operations and supply chain,” spokeswoman Kaitlyn Kasper said in an email July 13, adding that the company has “strict policies and procedures in place to ensure that no authorized Milwaukee Tool products are manufactured by using forced labor.”

Wisconsin Watch reporting spurs congressional investigation

The Wisconsin Watch investigation has prompted a bipartisan congressional investigation into Milwaukee Tool’s supply chain practices . 

In a July 10 letter to Milwaukee Tool Group President Steve Richman, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, commission co-chair, wrote that the use of forced Chinese labor violates international human rights standards, China’s international obligations and U.S. law.  

“We raise these concerns after reading an investigative report by Wisconsin Watch which detailed how political prisoners in Chishan Prison were forced to work against their will, with little pay, to produce gloves for your company,” said the letter, which outlined questions for Milwaukee Tool to answer.

“We understand that Milwaukee Tool may have strongly worded policies against the use of forced labor, as do most every company with global supply chains, but the evidence in this case is very compelling,” the lawmakers wrote. 

Speaking July 11 at a commission hearing called “Corporate Complicity: Subsidizing the PRC’s Human Rights Violations,” Smith called the findings from the Wisconsin Watch report “very, very damaging.”

A senior Department of Homeland Security official said his agency is examining the link between forced prison labor in China and products shipped to the U.S., but he did not specifically mention Milwaukee Tool.

“We have our Homeland Security Investigation agency, including through their presence at our embassy in Beijing, investigate and look into those kinds of issues,” said Under Secretary Robert Silvers, calling a lack of transparency into the Chinese system — and particularly its prisons — a challenge that regulators and “companies who want to do the right thing” must confront. 

Campaign prompts Walmart action

Shi’s campaign targeting Milwaukee Tool and its vendors caught the attention of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, an international organization tracking allegations of human rights abuses in the private sector. It urged the companies to respond. 

Also taking notice: Seventh Generation Interfaith, a Milwaukee-based investment coalition that manages $18 billion in assets and focuses on socially responsible investing, according to Christopher Cox, the group’s executive director.

Missouri-based Mercy Investment Services, one group member, engages with Walmart and other companies about preventing human rights abuses in their supply chains. 

Caroline Boden, Mercy’s director of shareholder advocacy, raised the question during the May 31 shareholder’s meeting that prompted McLaughlin of Walmart to confirm that the company had pulled Milwaukee Tool gloves from its marketplace.

Boden welcomed that public confirmation.

“It’s a great way just to raise salient material issues both to the company and to other shareholders,” she told Wisconsin Watch. 

Mixed responses from Amazon, The Home Depot

In May, Shi emailed a link to Wisconsin Watch’s investigation to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and urged his company to halt sales of the Milwaukee Tool-branded gloves on its marketplace.

An Amazon Executive Customer Relations Team representative confirmed to Shi that Jassy received the letter and that the “corresponding department” would review it as Amazon “takes a serious look at these problems,” according to correspondence Shi shared with Wisconsin Watch.       

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment to Wisconsin Watch. 

The Home Depot, Milwaukee Tool’s major distributor, said its internal investigation did not substantiate the allegations against Milwaukee Tool.

“When we learned of the allegations against Milwaukee, we immediately investigated them,”  spokesperson Beth Marlowe wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “We have not found any evidence that the Milwaukee gloves sold at The Home Depot are made with forced labor.”

The models of gloves allegedly made with forced prison labor continue to be sold online at Amazon and by The Home Depot.

More scrutiny of big companies 

Boden said her organization will continue to monitor Walmart’s practices and would like Walmart to share details of its internal investigation regarding Milwaukee Tool.

If the company decides to put the gloves back on the market, she wants assurances that they are free from prison labor.

Meanwhile, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China plans to continue scrutinizing Milwaukee Tool. In their July 10 letter, Merkley and Smith told Richman that the commission is “compiling information for future reports and a congressional hearing where we may request your testimony.”

Christen Dobson, senior program manager with the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, welcomed such scrutiny. 

“We believe it’s important for the company to be transparent,” Dobson said. “It’s a space where there’s a push for greater transparency and accountability related to human rights harms.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Walmart pulls Milwaukee Tool gloves allegedly made by Chinese prisoners is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature voted early Friday to end funding for a pandemic-era child care subsidy program over the objections of Democrats and child care providers who argued that the move would be devastating for needy families and the state’s economy.

The GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee, which writes the state budget, voted to kill funding around 2:30 a.m. after the start of its meeting was delayed more than 10 hours.

The Child Care Counts program handed out nearly $600 million to more than 4,900 child care providers from March 2020 through March 2023, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Providers struggling to make ends meet as parents worked from home used the money to cover expenses such as rent, mortgage payments, utilities, cleaning and professional development. The funding will be exhausted by February of next year, according to the fiscal bureau.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed making the program permanent using more than $300 million in state money over the next two years, but Republicans rejected that.

Democratic Sen. Kelda Roys said that Child Care Counts money saved child care centers from closing during the pandemic and warned that failing to continue the grants “will have a devastating impact” for children and the state’s economy.

“They know that child care will close. They know that families will no longer be able to work,” said Brooke Skidmore, owner of The Growing Tree child care center in New Glarus. “There is no logical reason not to fund this.”

Skidmore said Child Care Counts funding allowed her to increase her employees’ wages by $2 an hour as she struggled to hire enough staff to meet demand from parents.

“Parents, for the most part, are only able to have careers because of the work child care providers do,” said Tim Ballard, whose five-year-old daughter has been enrolled at The Growing Tree since she was eight weeks old.

“I don’t know how they can look at these children and say, ‘You don’t deserve this. This is too much for you,’” said Roys.

Republicans on the budget committee did not address the removal of Child Care Counts funding during debate on the plan, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.

Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, R-Oak Creek, said that Republicans are working on additional legislation to help people open more child care centers.

Evers’ office issued a statement ahead of the vote calling on Republicans to save the program. His spokesperson Britt Cudaback blasted the decision and the timing of the vote killing the funding.

“Wisconsin Republicans waited until many working families in their districts were fast asleep before they voted to gut hundreds of millions of dollars for Child Care Counts to make child care more affordable and accessible statewide,” she tweeted. “Profiles in courage.”

Wisconsin Republicans vote to end funding for child care program is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Wisconsin Legislature on Wednesday passed a bipartisan plan to prevent Milwaukee from going bankrupt that also sends more state aid to every community in the state, a long-sought-after funding increase agreed to by Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

The measure is part of a larger deal struck by Evers and Republican legislative leaders after months of talks that also increases K-12 education funding, including private voucher schools, by more than $1 billion. It was the highest profile deal reached between Evers, in the first year of his second term, and Republicans, who have found little common ground on most issues.

The local government and education funding bills, which passed both the Senate and Assembly with bipartisan support, now head to Evers.

Milwaukee leaders warned of dire consequences and catastrophic budget cuts as the city faces bankruptcy by 2025. Milwaukee is struggling with an underfunded pension system and not enough money to maintain essential police, fire and emergency services.

“We cannot let our largest city fail,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Spreitzer before the Senate passed it on a bipartisan 21-12 vote. The Assembly passed it later on a bipartisan 68-26 vote.

Evers, speaking Wednesday on WTMJ-AM before the vote, heralded the deal as “really, really important” both for Milwaukee city and county but also children due to the increase in funding, including more for mental health.

“We’ve met the issue square on,” Evers said. “Each side gave up on some things that are important to them. That’s how compromise is made.”

Both the Milwaukee proposal and the corresponding school funding bill have their Republican and Democratic detractors, despite the bipartisan deal.

Conservatives deride the Milwaukee bill as a bailout for the state’s largest and most Democratic city and say local sales tax increases should need voter approval. The state teachers union doesn’t like increasing voucher payments to private schools that are a part of the education funding plan and called on Evers to veto it.

“This is no compromise,” said Democratic Sen. Lena Taylor, who argued that the deal did not do enough to help Milwaukee. “This is grand theft.”

Democratic senators also objected to various parts of the bill that weren’t related to state aid, like a ban on local communities from placing advisory referendums on the ballot and limiting how long local health officials can order businesses closed during a health emergency.

“This Frankenstein monster of a bill should be slaughtered,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Larson, of Milwaukee.

Republican Sen. Mary Felzkowski said the bill was not perfect, “but let’s not let perfect get in the way of very, very good.”

The deal resolved the largest sticking point over who could determine whether Milwaukee city and county can raise the local sales tax to pay for pension costs and emergency services. Under the bill, that power rests with the Milwaukee County Board and the Milwaukee Common Council. Some Republicans wanted to require voter approval before taxes could be raised.

The long-sought-after proposal to stave off Milwaukee’s bankruptcy also sends more money to all of Wisconsin’s towns, villages, cities and counties.

The roughly $1.6 billion in aid to local governments — known as shared revenue — would be paid for by tapping 20% of the state’s 5-cent sales tax. Aid would then grow along with sales tax revenue.

Shared revenue to local governments has remained nearly unchanged for almost 30 years and was cut in 2004, 2010 and 2012.

Evers and Republicans have praised the deals as transformational wins for Milwaukee and local governors, as well as the state’s schools, while conceding that there are elements they oppose.

Evers, a former state superintendent, has long opposed expanding the state’s private school voucher system, which allows public school students to attend private schools for free. Under the deal, payments that private schools receive to accept public school students would increase. That would lower costs to allow private schools to expand the number of non-voucher students they accept.

“This is a historic attack on public education,” Democratic Rep. Ryan Clancy, of Milwaukee, said of the voucher school funding boost.

Advocates for voucher schools say the additional funding will help slow the closure of cash-strapped voucher schools. More than 40% of private schools that received vouchers have closed since the program began in Milwaukee in 1990. That was the first voucher program in the country. It expanded statewide in Wisconsin in 2013, but there are enrollment caps that would not grow under the deal.

The Senate passed the school funding bill on a bipartisan 24-9 vote, with two Democrats joining all Republicans in support. The Assembly passed it 62-31, with two Democrats joining Republicans in support.

Local funding, K-12 education deal passes Legislature is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Shannon Pikka loves the work-life balance of her job in construction. She left an office job in insurance and now enjoys being up early and working with her hands as part of a drywall finishing crew. The single mother’s workday ends around 3 p.m. — just in time to greet her two children from school.

“Kids are coming home at that time, and we got the whole evening now together,” Pikka said. “Our job should not dictate our lifestyle.”

Despite changing careers nearly four years ago, she’s still earning apprentice wages due to setbacks during the pandemic when her youngest was in third grade and schools switched to distance learning. 

“I would be a journeywoman right now had I had a babysitting option so I could have still shown up for work and gained all those hours in the year — so that set me back,” the De Pere, Wisconsin resident said. 

The difference is a full $9 an hour. As it is, she’s making just shy of $27 an hour. But with two school-aged kids in her household, paying all of the bills is a stretch. Pikka gets no child support, and she relies on her parents who live nearby to provide child care for the days she needs to be at a remote jobsite for days or even weeks at a time.

“I’m just trying to make ends meet,” she said. 

But government statistics show many in the community earn a lot less than she does. 

The state Department of Workforce Development estimates that two adults working full-time earning $25.20 an hour each is just enough to be self-sufficient in a household with two children when factoring in the cost of housing, transportation, food and child care. 

The average wage in Green Bay, according to the most recent federal Bureau of Labor Statistics report, was $26.29 in 2022. But the median earnings were $21.84 an hour, meaning that half of workers earn less than that.

In other words, many workers supporting families in northeast Wisconsin are just squeaking by, especially at a time when the cost of living is increasing in Wisconsin and across the nation. 

“Self-sufficiency is attainable for the majority of full-time workers if children are not involved,” wrote DWD spokesperson Jennifer Sereno. “However, the situation rapidly changes when just one child is brought into the picture, let alone multiple.”

That’s because the cost of child care can rival tuition at a state university, the Wisconsin Policy Forum wrote in a recent report. A state survey of child-care facilities found the annual median cost for school-aged children starts at around $10,000 but can be as much as $40,000 a year for high-quality infant care in urban areas like Green Bay and Oshkosh. 

Earnings too high to qualify for benefits

Pikka’s household has no second income, yet she is still well above the level to qualify for many public assistance programs.

Her story represents a growing segment of Wisconsin’s working population: those earning too much to qualify for most public assistance programs but too little to afford anything but basic necessities. United Way studies this group of people known as ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. Its latest report shows 23% of Wisconsinites fit into this category.

Help such as food assistance through the state’s FoodShare program, subsidized child care under the Wisconsin Shares program care and BadgerCare Plus health insurance are not available to many such families, including Pikka’s. 

“These are people who are working,” said Trisha Witt, who works in advocacy for United Way Fox Cities in Appleton. “They’re earning more than the federal poverty level but less than Wisconsin’s basic cost of living.”

When you add in the 11% of people living below the poverty line, the percentage of Wisconsinites struggling financially is 34%, according to the United Way report.

In northeast Wisconsin, the figures are similar, except in urban areas, where the numbers are starker. In Oshkosh, for example 41% of residents are either below poverty or not making enough for basic needs. 

Barriers to prosperity

It’s not due to a lack of employment. Official unemployment is at record lows with federal agencies reporting Wisconsin at a record 2.4% in April. Northeast Wisconsin was hovering at 2% or less. 

But while very few able-bodied adults are outside of the workforce, lack of affordable child care and transportation can keep people from working and meeting their basic needs. 

“No matter what the economic conditions are like,” said Ryan Long, a regional economist for the state Department of Workforce Development in Green Bay, “we know for certain that there are going to be folks who face barriers to work.”

On paper, Pikka has been relatively successful. For 15 years she sold insurance but entered the trades after becoming disillusioned with a desk job. But a string of abusive partners who ended up incarcerated or moving out of state has left her the sole breadwinner for her family.

Her life had been full of hardship from when she was left at a hospital in Colombia where she was born and never picked up. Pikka spent the next three years in an overcrowded South American orphanage where she said she suffered physical abuse.

“I have scars on my body because the nuns could not control the orphanage, so they beat us up,” she said. 

At age 4, a pair of school teachers adopted her and raised her in northeast Wisconsin. If it wasn’t for her parents helping with child care, Pikka said she could never maintain her higher paying career in construction.

“I wouldn’t be able to do it,” she said. “I’d have to go back to my office job.” 

The dearth of affordable child care in Wisconsin is well-documented. The staff shortage in day care centers itself has a ripple effect. On paper, there are roughly 37,500 slots for children in the 19 counties in northeast Wisconsin. But a survey last year of 1,173 child care centers in Wisconsin found nearly half were below capacity. 

“It is important to note that this is licensed capacity and providers may not be using all slots due to staffing shortages, low enrollment, or other factors,” wrote Gina Paige, a spokesperson for the state Department of Children and Families, which licenses day care facilities.

Hot housing market constrained by supply, rising interest rates

Affordable housing is another key to family sustainability. But a shortage of supply has driven up rental prices across the board.

“It doesn’t really matter what the availability of jobs is like if young folks are getting priced out of certain areas because housing is too expensive,” Long said.

Real estate data show that housing prices across the state continue to rise even as sales slump due to constrained supply and rising interest rates that have added to the cost of borrowing.

In April 2023, the median house in northeast Wisconsin cost $260,000. That’s $23,000 less than the statewide median. But the median cost rose 7% across the region in the previous year, similar to the increase statewide. 

All this happened while real estate transactions slumped after interest rates spiked from historic lows at below 3% to around 6.6% for a fixed 30-year loan in May. 

The numbers are stark: There were more than 1,500 residential home sales in June 2022, just as the Fed hiked interest rates for a third time in response to inflation fears. Ten months later in April of this year, the region saw half as many closed deals at 777.

Property owners who are locked in with relatively low interest rates are less likely to list their homes now because they’d pay higher rates on their next property, said real estate broker Kevin Jones, co-owner of Adashun Jones in Fond du Lac.

“There are more people pursuing the few properties that are on the market,” he said.

Houses harder to find, more expensive to rent

The region has already faced supply constraints as Baby Boomers live longer and stay put, leaving fewer properties for younger aspiring homeowners.

“We have healthy Baby Boomers — I’m one of them — who are staying in their homes longer, and millennials who are clamoring to find homes and are at a disadvantage because they increasingly have to rely on borrowed money,” Marquette University economics professor David Clark said at a recent economics forum.

He said many millennials of child-bearing age — those born in the 1980s and ‘90s — “kind of got dealt a bad hand” coming out of the Great Recession with a weak labor market and so “logically and rationally stayed out of the market” during the time when working Americans would purchase first homes.

Jones, the real estate broker and Fox Valley landlord, said the rental housing market is also hot with rents increasing by 10% to 20% annually. 

“I think it’s because a lot of the rentals have been consolidated into a small group of investors — that’s one side of the story,” he said. “And the other side is there’s just not enough homes and developments that are being created.”

In 2022, the National Low Income Housing Coalition — an advocacy group — listed the fair market price for a two-bedroom unit in northeast Wisconsin at between $757 in rural counties to $889 in the Oshkosh area . The study, citing U.S. Census figures, also found the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in counties across northeast Wisconsin — for that matter, across the entire state — is higher than the recommended 30% of the average income renters in those counties make. 

Home ownership remains elusive for Pikka. For three years, she has rented a two-bedroom apartment for $875 in De Pere where she enjoys living despite the higher housing prices compared to neighboring Green Bay. Once she works enough hours for journeyman wages, she said she’ll try to buy something.

But Pikka, who is 41, said that’s at least three years away. In the meantime she is pursuing another dream. Pikka would like to visit Colombia with her kids to reconnect with her birth parents.

This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s series, Families Matter, covering issues important to families in the region. The lab is a local news collaboration in northeast Wisconsin made up of six news organizations: the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, FoxValley365, The Press Times, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner. Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative. The mission of the lab is to “collaborate to identify and fill information gaps to help residents explore ways to improve their communities and lives — and strengthen democracy.”

Rising cost of living in northeast Wisconsin has many working families treading water  is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

After Esther Grams purchased her first business, she thought 2020 would be her year. 

It wasn’t.

She navigated the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic like other business owners, and during that time, she realized she might have to relocate.

That year, Gov. Tony Evers revived a plan to widen a 3.5-mile segment of the Interstate 94 East-West Freeway corridor in Milwaukee between the Marquette and Zoo interchanges from six to eight lanes — calling it one of the state’s “most congested and dangerous roads.”  

The plan would demolish the current home of Central Bark Milwaukee Westside, her franchised doggy daycare center near the freeway.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has tried to expand the 60-year-old freeway stretch between 16th and 70th Streets for over a decade, and in a previous plan, Grams’ business was slated for demolition. 

Grams is among six business owners in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley who are in limbo — waiting for the state to finalize the $1.2 billion project and enter negotiations for real estate acquisitions. One home will also be demolished as well. 

Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation want to expand the interstate to decrease traffic congestion, high crash rates and repair aging infrastructure. But the highway cuts through the city, and opponents say the expansion will disproportionately disrupt Milwaukee’s West Side neighborhoods that the highway shaped six decades ago. 

More than 20% of households near the corridor lack a car, and project critics say Wisconsin should invest more money in public transportation and less on expanding highways. 

Through its News 414 collaboration, Wisconsin Watch spoke with five people who live and work in Milwaukee’s West Side neighborhoods about how the expansion would affect them, and reviewed more than 50 testimonials and 100 public comments submitted to the state transportation department. While some residents support the expansion, many said it could either worsen or fail to address quality-of-life issues, such as noise from extra vehicles rushing down the highway and pothole-ridden local streets. 

Meanwhile, expansion opponents endorse an alternative plan to repair the freeway without adding additional lanes while also boosting public transit investment. 

“It’s unfortunate that the Department of Transportation and Gov. Evers have sidestepped the impacts to neighborhoods in favor of a quicker commute from suburbs to downtown,” said Milwaukee County Supervisor Peter Burgelis, who represents the neighborhoods near the freeway corridor. 

Business owners near I-94 in limbo

Since 2004, residents have dropped their dogs off at Central Bark Milwaukee Westside, which sits on the corner of West St. Paul Avenue and North 25th Street near I-94.

The dog daycare was among 11 businesses originally slated for demolition in the state’s previous expansion plan in 2016, which called for creating a “double decker” freeway and adding one additional lane to each side.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker halted the project in 2017, citing cost concerns before Evers revived his version. Construction is expected to begin in 2025.  

Evers wants to modernize the 27th Street interchange near I-94 by adding left- and right-turn lanes to increase its capacity, according to the state Department of Transportation.

Grams managed the daycare and other Central Bark locations for 12 years before purchasing the franchise in 2019 from an owner looking to downsize. Grams said she likes her current location’s convenience for long-time customers who mostly live in the suburbs. 

She knew about the possibility of the freeway project when purchasing the building but figured she had a few years to plan. She has been searching for new locations since late 2020. 

“I’m like a super planner. I try to plan everything out like super far in advance,” the 30-year-old said, adding that planning is difficult because she lacks a timeframe of when she’ll have to move.

Moving might allow Grams to expand and grow her business, she said, but it could also displace loyal customers, and she wonders how the dogs will adjust to a new facility. She wants to keep existing customers by staying in the Menomonee Valley area, but her franchise agreement limits her relocation options.   

Also facing demolition: Badger Ford Truck Center, a Ford dealership.

Badger Ford has operated near West St. Paul Avenue in Menomonee River Valley for 58 years. Its president told the Milwaukee Business Journal in 2021 that he would rather not move, and he had researched alternative sites years ago in response to the original plans to expand the highway.  

The dealership declined Wisconsin Watch’s interview request. 

Other businesses awaiting final decisions on the highway expansion to negotiate compensation for their properties include MKE Junk Junkies, a junkyard; Milwaukee Dog Training Club, which operates inside of Central Bark Milwaukee Westside; and a former Red Star Yeast warehouse and a private storage facility. 

Menomonee Valley Partners, a nonprofit dedicated to redeveloping the Menomonee River Valley, has praised the state’s decision to proceed with the project and said it hoped the businesses could relocate in the area.

The nonprofit did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s request for comment.

Burgelis said cutting off access during construction to 27th and 35th Streets, another interchange the state wants to modernize, will devastate small businesses in the area.

“The project is going to have real impacts to small businesses,” Burgelis said, adding that he hopes effects will not ripple to the surrounding neighborhoods.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation did not respond to questions for this story, but it shared a statement with Wisconsin Watch that said: “We remain committed to developing infrastructure solutions that benefit the public for decades to come.”

“We’ve listened to the community and stakeholders, and their feedback played an important role for modifications to the preferred alternative,” the statement said. 

Asked for comment, Evers’s office referred Wisconsin Watch back to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, which said in an additional statement: “The Evers administration and Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) care deeply about the impact of our infrastructure projects,” adding that the state remains committed to minimizing community impacts.

“The I-94 East-West Corridor Study is still undergoing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, including active public involvement currently underway for the Supplemental EIS to help determine the final configuration of the project,” the statement said.

Highways shape Milwaukee neighborhoods

Freeways have a long history of plowing through Black- and brown-majority neighborhoods nationwide. That includes I-94, said Christine Donahoe, an ACLU of Wisconsin staff attorney.

The 3.5-mile freeway stretch at issue cuts through seven different neighborhoods: Avenues West, Merrill Park, Piggsville, Johnson’s Woods, Bluemound Heights, Story Hill and Menomonee Valley. Each was shaped by highways and some still feel the impact of “white flight” from decades past, according to a City of Milwaukee analysis.

The communities were cohesive and thriving before the state built the highways through them, Donahoe said.

The interstate cut a racial boundary through Milwaukee and prioritized the movement of people and goods from the city’s white suburbs to its downtown, said Amanda Merkwae, the advocacy director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, during a public hearing about the expansion in 2022.

One neighborhood the highway overlooks is Johnson’s Woods, a quiet area between South Hawley Road and South 70th Street. It was established in the late 1800s and transformed in the 1950s when Milwaukee County razed a strip of its northern blocks to build I-94. 

Today, a metal gate separates the early-20th-century bungalows and two-story duplexes that sit near the freeway’s eastbound entrance ramp at 68th Street.

To upgrade the ramp, the state plans to demolish one residence, a 1960s ranch-style house that a mother of four and her husband rented for four years. The family did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s requests to comment. 

The state’s original 2016 plan would have demolished three residential homes on the northern edge of Johnson’s Woods and five others. 

“I’m glad that it’s only one, wish it was zero,” Burgelis said.

Sound barriers could reduce highway noise

One woman who has lived on the northern edge of Johnson’s Woods for 27 years shared concerns about noise pollution linked to the increasingly busy freeway corridor.

“I wish they put a wall up there if they’re not going to do nothing else — at least put a wall because it’s kind of noisy,” said the 72-year-old woman who declined to give her name.

Michelle Jacobi, a music instructor living nearby, agrees and wants a sound barrier for safety reasons, such as preventing dangerous action from the highway from spilling into her neighborhood. She recalled an incident in which a gunman shot a Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputy following a 2 a.m. traffic stop just south of I-94. A passenger and driver fled the car and ran into the neighborhood, where the passenger reportedly shot the deputy before fatally shooting himself. 

“I think the sound barrier would have prevented that,” Jacobi said. 

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation plans to build six noise barriers on both sides of the freeway. But property owners and residents must first vote on a barrier plan at a public meeting during the project’s final design, according to the department. 

Barriers could limit the noise from additional traffic, but they could also obstruct the views of neighborhood residents, “and it’s not it’s certainly not the same neighborhood that it was before that gets installed,” Burgelis said.

John Linn, a nearly 30-year Story Hill neighborhood resident, agrees. He likes being able to view the American Family Field parking lot from his house. 

“I just like an unobstructed view, and I’ve seen some of the sound barrier walls, and I just don’t I don’t think that’s attractive,” Linn, 65, said. “I think it makes the neighborhood look walled in.”

Linn said if the project keeps the current roadbed elevation around the neighborhood, he doesn’t see a point for the barriers. 

Milwaukee residents want fixes to local streets 

Numerous residents have complained about deteriorating local streets around the east-west corridor.

While Jacobi said she leans toward “being okay with” the expansion, she also wants a focus on filling the potholes lurking on neighborhood streets — including one in front of her house.

Other residents agree. 

“The quality of the freeway roads is probably just acceptable,” said Carlos Vasquez, who uses I-94 daily and has parents who live in Johnson’s Woods. “But the (local) streets are terrible. It’s hard to find one street where the whole street is like where you’re not just bumping around.”

More than one-third of major roads in Wisconsin are in fair or below roadway condition and likely to deteriorate over the next 10 years, according to a 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers report. 

The I-94 expansion would not focus on local roads, which lie outside of the state transportation department’s jurisdiction. Cities are generally responsible for maintaining their own streets, although state and federal funding sometimes helps. 

Opponents tout ‘Fix at Six’ alternative 

“Fix at Six” signs remain scattered throughout east-west corridor neighborhoods. That’s the name for an alternative plan — supported by a range of civil rights, environmental and health advocacy groups — to repair the existing six lanes of the highway stretch at issue while alleviating congestion by adding a rapid transit bus line and creating safer paths for cyclists. 

Dan Adams supports that option. He has lived on the border of the Piggsville and Merrill Park neighborhoods for 12 years and has criticized the highway widening plan since its earliest days.

The state transportation department rejected keeping the highway at six lanes after a 2016 department-commissioned study said the option would not effectively accommodate future traffic volumes in 2040.

But years of  research shows that widening highways can increase traffic volume by encouraging more people to drive.  

In a decade advocating for alternatives, Adams said he’s become “fairly jaded” and “just resigned” that the state would widen I-94 no matter what. 

“What we as neighbors said, what people at their community meetings said — it was just a foregone conclusion that they were going to extend it regardless of any other findings or input from the community,” Adams said. 

Residents widely agree that I-94 needs some reconstruction, but the neighborhoods surrounding it also need improvements, Adams said.

“We need some investments from the state to improve connections from our neighborhood, which is completely surrounded by the freeway, to surrounding neighborhoods and surrounding amenities,” Adams said, “and we also need investments in those amenities, whether it’s the parks or the bike trails or transit. And there’s just never any response. It’s just silence.”

The state transportation department plan includes additional bike lanes and a one-time $25 million funding for public transportation, but activists say more is needed at a time of deep fiscal challenges for the Milwaukee County Transit System that threaten service for thousands of bus riders.  

“You can always find a billion dollars for highway expansion,” Gregg May, the transportation policy director at 1000 Friends Wisconsin, said during a 2022 public hearing. “But when the Milwaukee County Transit System is facing a fiscal cliff, we can’t seem to find the money for that.” 

Jonah Chester contributed to this report. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

How would widening Milwaukee’s I-94 affect residents near the highway?  is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

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Wisconsin’s child care crisis affects you, even if you don’t know it.

Perhaps the only expense greater than the cost to sustainably fund our child care system, however, would be the price we’d pay if we don’t. The Council for a Strong America estimates the child care crisis already costs Wisconsin families, businesses and governments a combined $1.9 billion every year.

Nearly nine in 10 working parents say child care costs them time and productivity at work, which may mean more work for others or jobs that don’t get done. Lost wages and fewer sales mean less tax revenue for local, state and federal governments. 

Wisconsin’s broken child care system must be fixed for the sake of families, businesses, workers and the state’s general economic prosperity. 

“An investment in (the child care) industry is an investment in all industries across Wisconsin because parents work in every industry,” said Ruth Schmidt, Wisconsin Early Childhood Association’s executive director. 

There is no single solution that will address the shortage of care, centers’ high operating costs, workers’ very low wages and the exorbitant prices families pay for care.

Instead, industry experts and child care providers say effectively address industry needs requires government, employers and families to collaborate.  

“It’s like a three-legged stool,” said Julie Stoffel, owner and administrator of Cradle to Crayons Learning Center in Kimberly. “If you take one of those legs out, it’s not going to stand up. It’s not going to be good.” 

The USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, in collaboration with the NEW News Lab, talked to early childhood education experts, child care providers and parents to identify the gaps and discuss possible solutions to close them. Here’s what we found:

Child Care Counts sparked optimism — but its funding was just cut

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state created Child Care Counts to provide monthly stabilization payments to qualified child care businesses. The funding may have served as hope that Wisconsin was finally beginning to realize how essential child care is and the importance of the job done by early childhood educators.

“Everybody is expecting child care will continue to limp along as it has historically done,” Schmidt said. “What’s changed is the industry had a taste of what it’s like to be supported.”

Child Care Counts monthly payments helped about 3,000 child care businesses stay open. For the first time, many providers had a stable revenue source outside of the cost parents pay for care. In some cases, it allowed for wage increases (although child care is still a notoriously underpaid profession), long put-off updates and even prevented substantial tuition increases.

“For us, Child Care Counts has been able to make us stable in the sense that I don’t worry about how I’m going to make ends meet because I know we’re going to be supported … but I am still conscious of every penny that is spent,” Renae Henning, administrator at Community Care Preschool and Child Care in Beaver Dam, told The Post-Crescent.

Child Care Counts funding is set to run out by 2024 — and recently, the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families announced the total monthly amount will be cut in half beginning with the May 2023 payment. 

Six in 10 operators said if support ends they’ll have to raise tuition; one in three will cut wages, according to a survey of 1,173 Wisconsin centers.

Corrine Hendrickson, a licensed family child care provider in New Glarus and co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed, said the grassroots group’s research found many Wisconsin providers may have to increase their rates by 20%-40% to make up in lost revenue if Child Care Counts is not included in the state budget. With DCF’s recent announcement, rate increases may occur sooner, but by how much remains to be seen. 

Advocates such as Hendrickson recognize Child Care Counts’ continuation is essential, but warn that it merely stabilizes the industry. For child care businesses to thrive, additional investment and structural changes are needed, she said. 

So, what can Wisconsin governments do to make an impact?

Wisconsin can sustainably fund child care programs shown to help families, businesses and child care centers with special attention to the full cost to provide care.

The Partner Up grant program, administered by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, helps businesses cover the true cost of child care and provides some families with relief from high costs. Partner Up dollars, in combination with Child Care Counts stabilization payments, helped many child care centers increase wages, renovate classrooms and complete necessary updates. 

However, Child Care Counts and Partner Up largely rely on one-time dollars, leaving states like Wisconsin searching for a sustainable level and method of support. Some states have taken action to find long-term dollars for child care programs. In New Mexico, legislators amended the state constitution to tap existing education funding sources for early childhood education funding. The move should make care more affordable and support the state’s child care workforce. 

Communities across Wisconsin also have found effective ways to use one-time dollars to address their area’s child care needs.

The North Central Wisconsin Workforce Development Board used American Rescue Plan Act dollars to start new regulated family child care programs — meaning those that are within a provider’s home — and help existing programs add slots. The Worker Advancement Initiative Child Care Project, as it is called, helped add 93 new, regulated family child care slots in Adams, Wood, Portage, Marathon, Lincoln, Langlade, Forest, Vilas and Oneida counties.

The regional program awards an average of about $4,000 per child care business. The money helps operators overcome barriers to expansion, said Elsa Duranceau, the previous WAI grant coordinator who spearheaded the project.

The city of Green Bay and the Brown County United Way in March allocated $100,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding to seed a similar program via Family and Childcare Resources of Northeast Wisconsin, a regional industry resource center.

‘We’re not just babysitters’: Early childhood educators need recognition, reasonable wages

Teachers need specialized education to provide high-quality child care that helps young children develop vital social, emotional and cognitive skills. It can take time and require on-site field work.

Child care providers said poverty-level wages and minimal benefits contribute to high staff turnover, which can affect availability and quality of care. 

“It’s unfortunate we can’t treat being an early childhood educator as a career choice anywhere in our country,” Schmidt said. “(Early childhood educators) often earn no benefits, no retirement savings. And they’re doing some of the hardest work at the most important time.”

When Vanessa Hanagan, a student in Fox Valley Technical College’s early childhood education program who also works at Apple Tree Connections Early Learning Center in Appleton, tells others about her career aspirations, she’s often told she’s “wasting (her) time and talent.” Her classmates agree it’s a frustratingly common response. 

“I think if society comes to realize that we’re not just ‘babysitters’ to your children, I think that could change so much (about) pay and benefits just based on how people see us,” said Ysa Villagomez, another early childhood education student at FVTC.

It may not change public perceptions, but higher education institutions have recognized the industry’s workforce struggles and found small changes can have a big impact.

Appleton-based Fox Valley Technical College during the pandemic revised its field experience criteria to allow students with enough credits to work at a local child care center, according to Kathy Meetz, chairperson of FVTC’s Early Childhood Education Department. Centers can then factor their student workers into their child-to-staff ratios.

So far, five Wisconsin technical college systems have also introduced early childhood educator apprenticeships. David Polk, director of Wisconsin’s Bureau of Apprenticeship standards, said the agency continues to gauge early results. In general, 80% of apprentices stay with their employer for at least five years, Polk said.

He expects the apprenticeship will gain momentum, and could serve as a solution for an industry currently grappling with turnover rates of over 40%.

“As we onboard more of these individuals, that helps the greater community because if we have more teachers — more apprentices in the classroom — those child care centers can take on more (children),” Polk said.

In addition to apprenticeships, state Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, a former home child care operator, said expanding child care courses to high schools, streamlining child care center startup and certification, and making it easier for teachers to meet continuing education requirements could help the industry.

“If you have to spend so many hours to get certified when you’re trying to work, that can get in the way,” Goeben said. “Where’s the time for that? What can we do to help this process? Child care workers have a lot of expectations on them.”

Businesses have several options to help. What’s important is they do something

The majority of business owners and working parents recognize child care challenges affect productivity and exacerbate workforce shortages. 

The question businesses face is how to effectively help their employees, and communities, when the options available can be overwhelming and their effects differ in each community. Actions can be small, like connecting workers with information about subsidies, resources and available care, or on something of a larger scale. 

Appleton-based U.S. Venture pays for employee subscriptions to Care.com, a website that connects families who need child, senior or pet care with available providers that have passed a background check. Lori Hoersch, U.S. Venture’s chief people officer, said it has been popular with employees.

“Providing our team members a free membership allowed them to have an additional option available without additional cost,” Hoersch said in an email. “Today, our team members are still juggling busy lives, and providing extra support to balance the demands of work and family is very important to us.”

Speaking with those in the industry can help employers understand their area’s particular child care issues — whether it’s a lack of centers, a lack of staffing limiting slots, lack of second-shift care or a mix of all — and therefore determine where to best focus their efforts.

“A lot of really important stakeholders need to be involved. There’s a great place for collaboration in communities,” said Anne Hedgepeth, Child Care Aware of America’s chief of policy and advocacy. “Employers can play a role as a resource and be a voice for why we need these supports overall.” 

Large employers might build on-site or near-site child care to help their employees, often by providing discounts and priority placement. When the center enrolls children from the broader community, benefits can reach outside just the company. But the construction of a new center may have unintended consequences on the existing child care landscape; many centers are limited in how many children they can serve because of staffing shortages.

“What we’re often concerned about is that when you stand up a new child care program, you’re going to be pulling staff from other child care programs. It’s basically shifting chairs on the Titanic,” Schmidt said.

More companies choose to give their workers monthly or annual stipends to help cover the cost of child care. Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry saw the connection between its worker retention and child care in early 2022 and has since provided employees with a $400 monthly stipend for care.  

However, employer-sponsored stipends do not target all facets of the child care crisis.

“While incredibly helpful to families and a welcome step in the right direction, employer-sponsored child care stipends alone do not net additional revenue for child care businesses and therefore do not fix the industry’s broken business model,” Schmidt said.

Should we approach funding child care like we do roads? 

Many in the child care industry fear that without immediate action, it faces imminent collapse. 

For the industry to thrive, not just scrape by, people need to reassess their perceptions of early childhood education. Advocates say the current system does not work — and all of Wisconsin pays for it.

The key lies in changing society’s perception — and the funding model — of child care from a service to a public good, like infrastructure, Hendrickson said. Between raising the future’s workforce to retaining the present-day ever-shrinking one, all benefit from a healthy child care system. 

“Child care is infrastructure, it is a core public service just like roads that we need to help the rest of society function properly,” said state Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, who is an advocate for state child care investments. 

Exactly how Wisconsin can make this shift remains to be seen. However, Hendrickson said two hallmarks must be present: it must consider the true cost of care, and be statewide as not to perpetuate inequities.

This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s fourth series, “Families Matter,” covering issues important to families in the region. The lab is a local news collaboration in northeast Wisconsin made up of six news organizations: the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, FoxValley365, The Press Times, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner. Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative. The mission of the lab is to “collaborate to identify and fill information gaps to help residents explore ways to improve their communities and lives — and strengthen democracy.”

Madison Lammert covers child care and early education across Wisconsin as a Report for America corps member based at The Appleton Post-Crescent. To contact her, email mlammert@gannett.com or call 920-993-7108. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to Report for America.

Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.

Should Wisconsin fund child care like it does roads? Here are some solutions to the child care crisis is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

The old proverb says that “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Today, it takes the whole village, city or town — employers, families and government — to raise a child care center. 

Gabby Sorano needed support from all three to open the 35-slot Antigo Child Care Center last year in the city of 8,100 people 80 miles northwest of Green Bay.

Langlade County, where Antigo is located, is a child care desert: an area either without child care or where there’s fewer than one slot per three children. Langlade currently has one child care slot for every 4.3 children, the highest ratio in the 10-county North Central Wisconsin region.

Sorano was familiar with the region’s shortage after her son lost a spot during the pandemic. So when a child care center closed in Antigo, the former schoolteacher saw an opportunity to fill the gap.

To open, Sorano overcame pretty much every symptom of the early childhood education industry’s broken business model: low teacher salaries, space needs and costly building upgrades, regulatory reviews and inspections, and sky-high tuition fees that do not cover all of a center’s operating costs. 

Combined, she said, the hurdles can deter even the most passionate person from opening a center. Sorano’s idea needed a lot of community support before she could assure her family, children’s families, and the region’s employers that Antigo Child Care Center could survive long-term.

Fortunately, Langlade County was ready. According to Angie Close, executive director of the Langlade County Economic Development Corp., it only needed Sorano. 

“It definitely took collaboration and the right person. Gabby is the star,” Close said. “We were blessed to have Gabby come forward and take that leap.”

Here’s how the Antigo region rallied to support Sorano so she could open Antigo Child Care Center in July 2022. 

Antigo, Langlade already viewed child care as a workforce issue

Langlade County learned during the pandemic that a lack of adequate child care cost its economy about $15 million in 2019, Close said. The county formed a child care task force to foster community collaboration and to send the message that child care is a workforce issue.  

“Child care is such an important part of our talent attraction piece,” Close said. “Without child care, our workforce challenges will continue to grow.”

City agencies, county agencies, state grants and Childcaring Inc., central Wisconsin’s regional child care resource and referral agency, all provided necessary time, support and funding to help Sorano overcome some early hurdles. 

Sorano identified a building on Fifth Avenue, formerly used as a child care center, as a space for her new business. It turned out the building was owned by the Antigo Housing Authority, which agreed to renovate and remodel the space into classroom spaces for 35 children.  

“We wouldn’t have been able to afford that starting out,” Sorano said. 

Close and other city and county officials would also help Sorano apply for and secure a Main Street Bounceback Grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to help with startup costs. The public also contributed $7,100 to a GoFundMe campaign for playground equipment. 

It was not enough. 

Family fees don’t cover the full cost of care

Everyone knows child care is expensive. Some might know that early childhood teachers could probably get paid more to work in a convenience store. 

What much of the public doesn’t know or notice is that family fees and subsidies that help low-income families afford child care do not come close to covering a center’s entire budget. 

“People don’t realize their family fees go toward so many things,” Sorano said. “There’s paying for staff, toys, food, maintenance, rent, utilities, consumable supplies and so many other things.”

This is where Sorano was stuck. Her business plan showed tuition and program grants covered only two-thirds of the center’s projected operating costs. The business plan left little room for better wages and benefits for teachers, a priority for Sorano. There was no room to raise the already-high fees families would be asked to pay. 

Close said it was an eye-opening moment.  

“I did not realize what the people who are taking care of your children are getting paid because that’s all the centers can afford to pay them,” Close said. “You can assume all you want, but when you get real data that show these numbers, it’s ‘Oh, my gosh.’”

Sorano, Close and others tried to think of another revenue stream Antigo Child Care Center could tap, some innovative way to plug the gap and provide the service everyone in Langlade County knew was needed. 

It turned out Sorano was not the only one looking to do more about the child care challenge. 

‘Getting anybody in the workforce helps the community as a whole’

The answer Sorano found was to offer local employers a tiered partnership opportunity. 

Here’s how it works: Local businesses can pay Antigo Child Care Center a monthly stipend that Sorano uses to boost teacher salaries and to pay for a variety of items outlined in the partnership agreement.

In exchange, the company’s workers get priority access to six, eight or 10 slots at ACCC, depending on the partnership level, and employees receive a weekly discount on care. Two organizations have signed up: Volm Companies Inc. and the Unified School District of Antigo.  

Volm, part of the Antigo business community since 1966, signed up for the six-slot tier. Linda Esker, Volm’s corporate human resources director, said it’s unclear whether the partnership directly resulted in retaining any of Volm’s roughly 550 employees. But she said Volm looked at other measures to gauge its importance and success.

“Our agreement with Gabby is really key to getting people into the workforce,” Esker said. “It could mean getting people into the workforce for Volm, which is the hope, but getting anybody in the workforce helps the community as a whole. I’m not as competitive with other employers if there are more people to draw from.”

Sorano said each partnership enables her to pay her teachers more, one of her biggest concerns about starting Antigo Child Care Center. She said she structured teacher contracts so that if partnerships are in place, teachers get paid a higher wage. She said the partnerships, and the business plan, are what sustains Antigo Child Care Center.

“I’m very thankful for these partnerships,” Sorano said.

The building blocks for growth

The community collaboration that helped Sorano launch Antigo Child Care Center has everyone involved thinking about what more they can do to address the region’s needs.

Volm’s operations run 24/7, but second- or third-shift child care is practically nonexistent in Antigo and many other Wisconsin cities. Additionally, Close and Sorano both noted many Langlade County residents live outside the Antigo area in smaller, rural communities that suffer from a severe shortage of child care.  

“This is a great step forward, but there’s a lot more work to do,” Esker said. “Part of it is providing care on an alternate schedule. It’s a struggle.”

Sorano focused on smaller growth, first. 

Antigo Child Care Center announced a summer program for school-age children, and about 40 kids have signed up so far. Sorano is also in discussions with the Antigo Housing Authority on additional building renovations that could enable it to add four more infant slots and four more toddler slots. 

“Everyone coming together is going to blossom and bloom into other things,” Sorano said. “When we have the support and financial stability, I feel comfortable opening a school-age summer program or expanding to the meet the need. Without the support of the community, there’s no way I feel like someone would want to take on something else.”

This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s fourth series, “Families Matter,” covering issues important to families in the region. The lab is a local news collaboration in northeast Wisconsin made up of six news organizations: the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, FoxValley365, The Press Times, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner. Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative. The mission of the lab is to “collaborate to identify and fill information gaps to help residents explore ways to improve their communities and lives — and strengthen democracy.”Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.

It takes a village: How collaboration helped a small northern Wisconsin city add crucial child care is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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 last time the 12 month–average inflation rate was below 5% was in April 2021, when it was 4.2%, according to U.S. Labor Department data. In March 2023, it sank to 5% for the first time since May 2021.

Consumer prices sharply declined at the start of the pandemic due to lower demand for goods and services. As consumer demand rebounded, the U.S. inflation rate hit a four-decade high 7.9% in February 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine further boosted the cost of food and fuel, prompting inflation to peak at 9.1% in June 2022. It has fallen every month since. The government’s target rate is 2%.

March’s lower inflation rate reflects several factors: Food prices remained about the same, energy prices fell, but housing prices continued to rise.

An economist writing in April for the World Economic Forum website said today’s inflation is a global phenomenon — not caused by any one country or leader — and warned of a “period of permanently higher inflation”

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

US Inflation Calculator Current US Inflation Rates: 2000-2023

World Economic Forum Inflation reaches lowest point in almost two years

World Economic Forum 4 reasons inflation will stay stubbornly high for some time

AP News US inflation soared 7.9% in past year, a fresh 40-year high

Has US inflation been at or above 5% for the last two years? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

The idyllic American family conjures up images of a home in 1950s suburbia, a white picket fence, a golden retriever, and 2.5 kids.

The United States’ total fertility rate indicates that, for the U.S. to sustain its current population, women need to have an average of 2.1 children.

If that birthrate isn’t sustained, the country risks a shrinking workforce, economic decline and a dwindling tax base.

Those risks have turned into reality. 

The United States’ total fertility rate is now 1.7 kids and falling. Almost half of non-parent adults tell the Pew Research Center they will likely not have any children. 

Northeastern Wisconsin families understand why. They know the persistent struggle to afford everything from diapers to housing. It now costs $310,600 to raise a child from birth to age 18, a 9.1% increase from five years ago, according to The Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit public policy organization. 

One challenge has become particularly severe: Child care.

The Economic Policy Institute found that a year of infant care can cost Wisconsinites more than tuition at a public college. Families have started to plan pregnancies around the availability of care, as they encounter years-long wait lists at child care centers.

Missy Schmeling, executive director at Encompass Early Education and Care Inc., hears about families’ struggles when they visit one of Encompass’ seven Brown County locations in search of a slot. 

“We have families asking where the food pantries are, about transportation,” Schmeling said. “It’s an impossible burden on families. And another child will require more care.”

The NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab is launching its fourth series, “Families Matter,” covering issues important to families in the region. This year, reporters from six news outlets — Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), Wisconsin Watch, The Press Times and FoxValley365 — will spotlight the daily struggles families face, dig up solutions and options, and explain why these topics impact not only families, but the whole state. 

A ‘really tricky spot’: Child care imperative for many Wisconsinites

In more than 70% of Wisconsin households with children under 6, all available parents are in the workforce, according to Annie E. Casey Foundation data.

Without access to affordable child care, parents are forced to work less, ultimately earn less and risk deeper financial struggle.

“There’s this really tricky spot that I feel like a lot of millennials have found themselves in where you are making too much money for it to make sense for one of you to stay home, but not enough money to feel comfortable with how much money you have to put toward daycare,” said Christine Gunderson, a Green Bay mom whose infant is in full-time child care.

Child care issues may result in a parent moving from full-time work to part-time. A parent may have to sacrifice their career and earnings altogether. Others may find no feasible solution.

Plus, not just any care is acceptable.  

Experts say 85% to 90% of a child’s core brain development occurs before the age of 5, and quality child care teaches social emotional skills that are key for school readiness. High-quality early education is even linked to higher career earnings later in life, according to Alejandra Ros Pilarz, an early care and education researcher. 

‘It’s kind of wild it’s come to that’: Parents time pregnancies around child care

Tammy Dannhoff opened Kids Are Us Family Child Care in her Oshkosh home 34 years ago. Seeing families were timing pregnancies around child care providers’ openings, she added a “Baby Watch” section to her newsletter, to keep parents in the loop regarding openings. 

As of early 2023, her center’s next opening was in fall 2026.

Given the state of child care availability in Wisconsin, planning far in advance doesn’t seem so far-fetched. The Center for American Progress in 2018 estimated more than one in two Wisconsinites lived in a child care desert — an area where care is not available or the number of children exceeds the number of slots. Rural areas are worse: 70% of rural Wisconsin is a child care desert. Staffing shortages regularly exacerbate availability issues. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown County lost an estimated 600 child care slots to closures and providers opting to retire, according to Family and Childcare Resources of Wisconsin officials.

Lack of available care leads to massive waitlists. For example, Encompass had about 350 children on its waitlist in January. Some centers do not know when the next opening might be. 

Even if families get on waitlists as soon as they learn they’re pregnant, Wisconsin parents still might not be able to secure a slot at their first-choice facility. Some might still be without care by the time their child is born.

A friend told Green Bay’s Destiny Desotell to get on child care waitlists after she learned she was pregnant in May 2021. By that summer, she was on several wait lists and shocked when some centers told her it’d be years before they had an opening for an infant.

“Essentially, you have to be like ‘I think I am going to have a kid in two years, put me down on the waitlist now,’ because it’s a realistic expectation that it’s going to be a two-year wait,” Desotell said. 

Eventually, Desotell secured care for her infant, now 13 months old, at Encompass’ Bellin Health Center location in Allouez. Her child received priority placement because she works for Bellin as a cardiac sonographer. Even then, the spot was not open until a month after Desotell returned from maternity leave, forcing her to bridge the gap with a licensed, in-home provider and help from her family.

Abby Funseth of New Glarus timed the conception of her second child, who is now 7 months old, around a child care opening. To even consider having another child, she said she needed to know she had care lined up first. 

The Funseths were given a two-month window if they wanted their second child to make it into an opening at Corrine’s Little Explorers. They met that timetable, but that might not be possible for every family.

“The entire … trajectory of our family planning came down to child care and its lack of availability,” Funseth said. “You put pressure on this timeframe to conceive a child, and it just takes all of the joy out of it. It’s like a business (transaction).” 

Alex Steen, a Beaver Dam mom, is thinking about child care as she plans to have a second child. She recently paid Community Care Preschool & Child Care Inc., which her 2-year-old daughter attends, $200 to secure an infant spot.

“It’s kind of wild that it’s come to that: that you can place your unconceived children on a waitlist just to ensure they have care when they come about,” she said.

Unaffordable care also contributes to larger age gaps between children

“Affordable” child care is defined as costing no more than 7% of a family’s household income, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

“That’s not a realistic number to attain,” Schmeling said.

In reality, a typical Wisconsin family with an infant and a 4-year-old spends 33.6% of its income on child care, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Infants typically require more costly care.  

Brown, Outagamie, Winnebago and Fond du Lac county families are familiar with these costs. Home-based child care for one infant will cost a median-income family 10.5% to 12.2% of their income, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Center-based care costs 14.7% to 17.4% of the median household income. 

Meanwhile, a minimum wage worker in Wisconsin would spend on average 83% of their income on child care, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Tyler Sjostrom of Appleton said child care for he and his wife’s two children costs more than their mortgage, car payments, insurance and utilities combined.

“I don’t know anybody who has kids in daycare who isn’t always a little bit seething about (the cost),” Sjostrom said. “If you get a group of parents together and somebody mentions daycare, it descends into chaos really quick.” 

Costs may be high — Northeast Wisconsin families pay an average of $11,000 to $13,000 per year for in-center toddler care — but what families pay often does not cover all of a center’s operating costs, such as rent, maintenance and food, or allow it to provide its employees with a living wage and competitive benefits.

Green Bay’s Savannah Zoch and her husband feel high-quality early education and care is vital to early childhood development. Because Zoch is a community engagement specialist for Encompass, she receives a 60% employee discount on child care for her two children — a lifesaver for her family.

“Without the Encompass employee discount, I would basically be working to pay for child care,” Zoch said.

Because of the high cost of child care, many families now wait to have a second child until their first begins school, at least part time. That’s the case for Steen, who said she’ll probably wait until her daughter enrolls in 4K.

Currently, her daughter only attends child care three days a week, but if it were five days a week, the cost would make having a second child impossible, she said. 

“In our situation, we are settling for a larger age gap than we might truly want,” Steen said. 

Anna Schneider, a mom of two from Denmark and sister to Abby Funseth, wants a third child, but financial concerns are also prompting her to wait. 

“You want to be able to have kids when you want to have kids, but financially speaking, it doesn’t make any sense for us to have three kids in daycare right now because it would make more sense for one of us to stay home (and not work),” she said. 

To delay or not to delay? That is the dilemma.

Waiting to have a second or third child, however, may come with its own costs.

Gunderson pointed out that car seats expire and may need to be replaced, and other equipment, like cribs, may be deemed unusable due to recent safety upgrades.

While children are in care, parents often have to make sacrifices. Sjostrom said child care costs determine his family’s discretionary income. For other families, the tradeoffs may be more grave. Roughly one in three households in Brown, Outagamie, Winnebago and Fond du Lac counties are already below the federal poverty level or struggle to afford the basic cost of living, according to the 2020 Wisconsin ALICE Report.  

Age is also a consideration for many parents — both the age gap between their children and their own.

Desotell is in her late 20s, and her husband is in his early 30s.

“(My 13-month-old) still sometimes doesn’t sleep through the night consistently, and I don’t know if I want to do that at 35,” Desotell said. 

It’s a reality more families will have to confront, as many parents are starting families later in life. 

U.S. Census American Community Survey data shows that between 2011 and 2021, fewer people between the ages of 20 and 34 bore children, while the birth rate among ages 35 to 50 steadily increased. 

Medical professionals generally categorize giving birth at 35 or older as “advanced maternal age.” While it is increasingly common for people to have children after 35 — even a first child — the medical community recognizes there are medical risks to both the pregnant person and baby. 

That’s something that has been on Funseth’s mind recently. 

“When we think about the potential of adding another child to our family, I’m thinking about: ‘When does my oldest go into the school system so we won’t be paying for her daycare anymore?’” she said. “And … ‘When will (our child care provider) have another opening for a baby?’ That might be for a couple of years yet, and I’m almost 35; will we be able to have another?”

Beyond families: the broader impact of the child care crisis

Northeast Wisconsin’s child care crisis is taking an increasing economic toll, too. As such, employers and economic development organizations are already realizing its impact their workforce.

It’s no secret that Wisconsin’s workforce situation is less than ideal: “Help wanted” signs adorn most workplaces, and in September Forward Analytics projected the state could lose 130,000 working-age people by 2030.

The report said women drove a decline in workforce participation among all Wisconsinites ages 35 to 44 and cited family reasons, including a lack or high cost of child care, as potential contributors to the trend.

Child care challenges have a ripple effect, costing Wisconsin’s economy $1.1 billion annually, Raising Wisconsin, the advocacy arm of Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, found. The same study found 75% of business owners believe child care affects the economy, and 86% of caregivers said child care issues hurt their work time.

Christina Thor, Wisconsin director for the advocacy group 9 to 5 – National Association of Working Women, said available, affordable child care — like affordable housing and adequate health care — can either attract people to Wisconsin or hasten young peoples’ departures.

“We are estimated to lose 130,000 residents by 2030,” Thor said. “That’s young people moving from the state for different opportunities. That’s huge. And that’s scary.”

Ana Hernández Kent, a senior researcher at the Federal Reserve’s Institute for Economic Equity, said employers miss out on potential employees when they do not consider the needs of working moms. While 84% of women without children are employed, that figure falls to 74% for working mothers. 

“If you talk about women in the economy, you can’t do that without talking about child care issues. (Women and mothers) bear the brunt of taking care of the kids whether or not they work,” Kent said. “But it also has broader implications. If a mom has to take time off she didn’t want to, it impacts their (family’s) financial stability, their economic mobility.”

Because women bear a disproportionate brunt of child care responsibilities, flexible workplace policies like the ability to work from home, child care assistance and paid family leave have already become vital benefits to working parents.  

“Those kinds of things are really positive for women and mothers,” Kent said.

Northeast Wisconsin workforce would ‘boom’ if child care issues were resolved

Thor prefers to think about what Northeastern Wisconsin would look like if the region found ways to address families’ child care needs, especially the “big, big gap” in culturally-competent child care she said the region’s increasingly diverse communities need.

“We’d bloom,” Thor said. “I feel like our workforce would boom.” 

Raising Wisconsin estimates addressing child care needs would enable 250,000 people to enter the state’s workforce. 

Ann Franz, executive director of the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance, said manufacturers recognize the need to do something different. Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry now offers employees a $400 monthly reimbursement to help with child care costs while Schreiber Foods is testing a $5,000 annual child care stipend for workers at two of its facilities. A variety of employers secured Partner Up Grants from the state to provide child care for their employees.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are a lot of resources that can help our companies and our region know the options,” Franz said.

Shawn Phetteplace, Midwest regional manager for Main Street Alliance, a group that empowers small businesses to create policy changes, warns that leaving the issue to businesses alone could lead to further inequity for small businesses.

“If child care becomes a benefit that an employer provides rather than a broad-based community asset, it puts small businesses at a competitive disadvantage,” Phetteplace said. “If we make public investments in health care, child care, paid leave, (small businesses) can increase pay. It creates a level playing field for them to grow.” 

Wisconsin stands to reap huge economic benefits if family-friendly incentives allowed more women and minority residents to enter the workforce, studies such as Council for a Strong America’s “Want to Strengthen Wisconsin’s Economy? Fix the Childcare Crisis” have shown. 

Just like many other issues families face, the child care crisis cannot be solved with a single program, grant, innovation, incentive or change.

But such solutions are what Sjostrom, the Appleton father of two, longs for. 

“I hope that we’re still not talking about this when my kids have kids, but I also think that if we are, (my wife and I) will understand and try to help,” Sjostrom said. “There has to be a solution where families aren’t mortgaging everything for the right to have kids and help them thrive.”

Contact Jeff Bollier at 920-431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier. 

Madison Lammert covers child care and early education across Wisconsin as a Report for America corps member based at The Appleton Post-Crescent. To contact her, email mlammert@gannett.com or call 920-993-7108. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to Report for America.

What would help make family life better in Northeast Wisconsin? This is one of the questions the NEW News Lab hopes to answer in 2023. Write to the lab at families@wisconsinwatch.org or call 608-262-3642 and leave a message with your name, what you’re calling about and phone number.

High child care costs, low accessibility leads to smaller Wisconsin families is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 30, 2023 with additional information related to bus fare changes.

Milwaukee County is modernizing its bus fare collection system, aiming to make transit equitable for residents. 

Bus riders can pay for their fares through WisGo, a new fare collection system, starting Saturday, April 1.

Everyone with a plastic WisGo card or the Umo mobile app will ride for free after reaching daily, weekly and monthly caps. Riders currently paying with an M-card have through the end of September to transition to the new system. 

Milwaukee County leaders gathered on Wednesday to announce the launch of WisGo and its partnership with Waukesha County, which is joining the fare collection system. Leaders touted a system that’s equitable for riders and predicted it would help return ridership to pre-pandemic levels. 

“Historically, only those who could afford to pre-purchase discount passes to ride the bus got the best value. But with WisGo, these inequities are being addressed through fare capping. Now, everyone pays the same rates no matter how many times they ride,” County Supervisor Priscilla Coggs-Jones said in a news release. 

Milwaukee County, like public transit systems across Wisconsin, has faced a years-long slide in ridership and revenue that only worsened as remote work options expanded during the pandemic. While Milwaukee County ridership is recovering from the lowest pandemic-era numbers, it’s still lagging behind its earlier status. 

The new fare collection system is powered through the Umo Mobility platform and is used around the world in places such as New York and London.

The technology has made transit in those cities easier to navigate as ridership recovers from the pandemic levels, said Bonnie Crawford, Umo’s vice president and general manager.

“People expect technology. We’re used to connecting to technology in all of the ways that we engage in our neighborhoods, whether that’s paying for your coffee or buying your groceries, and this is really that next step for Milwaukee County and the region,” Crawford said. 

Riders can scan their phone or WisGo card on tap-and-go validators onboard buses, which will determine how many times a rider has paid a fare and automatically deduct the lowest amount owed. The validator will also tell riders if their fund balance is low.

Riders will also be able to use WisGo cards and the Umo app on Waukesha Metro Transit buses. Waukesha County is the first to join the regional fare system.

“Transit is something that’s extremely important for a big segment of our population. It gets a lot of people to work; gets them to the doctor; it gets them to the grocery store; and without it, I don’t know how we would really function,” said Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly, adding that the two counties aim to make transit efficient. 

Under WisGo, riders will immediately see lower costs.

The regular fare — for ages 12 to 64 — will be $2 per ride, down from $2.25. Under WisGo, it will be capped at $4 per day, $19.50 per week and $72 per month.

The reduced fare — for ages 6 to 11, 65 and older and those with qualifying disabilities — will be $1 per ride, down from $1.10. It will cap at $2 per day, $11 per week and $32 per month under WisGo. Learn more about reduced fares here. 

M-Card or cash riders will continue paying regular per-ride fares of $2.25 or reduced fares of $1.10 until the transition period ends Sept. 30. After that, the cash fare will drop to $2 per ride or $1 under the reduced fare.  

“The way that you’re going to get riders on board is to ensure that no rider is left behind, and that’s really a commitment we have here in Wisconsin and throughout the world,” Crawford said. 

The Umo Mobility app will replace the RideMCTS app. The app connects to other modes of transportation like Uber and provides real-time tracking of Milwaukee County and Waukesha County buses. It accepts credit and debit cards, along with Apple Pay, Google Pay and WisGo cards. 

The WisGo card is an alternative to the Umo app and will replace the M-Card. The cards will be sold and available for reloading at nearly 100 locations, such as supermarkets, pharmacies and convenience stores.

M-Card users can exchange cards for a free WisGo card from April 1 through June 30. After that, the card will cost $2. Reduced fare riders will receive a WisGo card in the mail. Riders with Commuter Value Passes and U-Passes are automatically enrolled in WisGo.

Riders will not be able to store value on the M-Card starting Aug. 31, and the Milwaukee County Transit System will stop accepting the card on Sept. 30. MCTS CONNECT, Milwaukee County’s bus rapid transit service that launches June 4, will not accept M-Cards. 

Riders can still pay with cash on all bus routes, but those paying cash will not qualify for fare caps.

Regular fare replacement for WisGo cards will cost $2, and reduced fare replacement cards will cost $5.

Ambassadors will assist riders with downloading the Umo app or getting a WisGo card. 

For more information

Virtual and in-person sessions explaining the program are slated for April 6, April 22 and April 28. You can sign up at RideMCTS.com/Community.

You can also visit the following resources for information on WisGo:

RideMCTS.com/WisGo: Timeline and overview of WisGo

RideMCTS.com/UmoApp: How to download the Umo app

RideMCTS.com/WisGoLocations: Where to pick up a free WisGo card through June 30

RideMCTS.com/TopThingstoKnowAboutWisGo: Quick tips

RideMCTS.com/ReducedFare: For minors, seniors, and persons with a disability

RideMCTS.com/TPReducedFare: For Transit Plus riders who use the bus

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Milwaukee County to cap bus fares under new system. Here’s what to know.  is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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 Kaiser Health News and a version of it originally ran on khn.org.

Marjorie Kruger was stunned to learn last fall that she would have to leave the nursing home where she’d lived comfortably for six years.

The Good Samaritan Society facility in Postville, Iowa, would close, administrators told Kruger and 38 other residents in September. The facility joined a growing list of nursing homes being shuttered nationwide, especially in rural areas.

“The rug was taken out from under me,” said Kruger, 98. “I thought I was going to stay there the rest of my life.”

Her son found a room for her in another Good Samaritan center in Waukon, a small town 18 miles north of Postville. Kruger said the new facility is a pleasant place, but she misses her friends and longtime staffers from the old one. “We were as close as a nice family,” she said.

The Postville facility’s former residents are scattered across northeastern Iowa. Some were forced to move twice, after the first nursing home they transferred to also went out of business.

Owners say the closures largely stem from a shortage of workers, including nurses, nursing assistants, and kitchen employees.

The problem could deepen as pandemic-era government assistance dries up and care facilities struggle to compete with rising wages offered by other employers, industry leaders and analysts predict. Many care centers that have managed to remain open are keeping some beds vacant because they don’t have enough workers to responsibly care for more residents.

The pandemic brought billions of extra federal dollars to the long-term care industry, which was inundated with covid-19 infections and more than 160,000 resident deaths. Many facilities saw business decline amid lockdowns and reports of outbreaks. Staff members faced extra danger and stress.

The industry is still feeling the effects.

From February 2020 to November 2021, the number of workers in nursing homes and other care facilities dropped by 410,000 nationally, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Staffing has rebounded only by about 103,000 since then.

Wisconsin’s long-term care industry is similarly in “crisis,” with roughly one out of every five caregiver positions vacant, the state’s leading industry associations wrote in a 2022 report. It found there were 23,165 open caregiving positions — but only 19,600 workers in all of Wisconsin who were not in the labor force but who wanted to work.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin lost 42 skilled care nursing homes between 2016 and 2021, according to Leading Age Wisconsin, an industry group. 

In Iowa, 13 of the 15 nursing homes that closed in 2022 were in rural areas, according to the Iowa Health Care Association. “In more sparsely populated areas, it’s harder and harder to staff those facilities,” said Brent Willett, the association’s president. He noted that many rural areas have dwindling numbers of working-age adults.

The lack of open nursing home beds is marooning some patients in hospitals for weeks while social workers seek placements. More people are winding up in care facilities far from their hometowns, especially if they have dementia, obesity, or other conditions that require extra attention.

Colorado’s executive director of health care policy and financing, Kim Bimestefer, told a conference in November that the state recognizes it needs to help shore up care facilities, especially in rural areas. “We’ve had more nursing homes go bankrupt in the last year than in the last 10 years combined,” she said.

In Montana, at least 11 nursing homes — 16% of the state’s facilities — closed in 2022, the Billings Gazette reported.

Nationally, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported recently that 129 nursing homes had closed in 2022. Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association, said the actual count was significantly higher but the federal reports tend to lag behind what’s happening on the ground.

For example, a recent KHN review showed the federal agency had tallied just one of the 11 Montana nursing home closures reported by news outlets in that state during 2022, and just eight of the 15 reported in Iowa.

Demand for long-term care is expected to climb over the next decade as the baby boom generation ages. Willett said his industry supports changing immigration laws to allow more workers from other countries. “That’s got to be part of the solution,” he said.

The nursing home in Postville, Iowa, was one of 10 care centers shuttered in the past year by the Good Samaritan Society, a large chain based in South Dakota.

“It’s an absolute last resort for us, being a nonprofit organization that would in many cases have been in these communities 50 to 75 years or more,” said Nate Schema, the company’s CEO.

The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, the full name of the company, is affiliated with the giant Sanford Health network and serves 12,500 clients, including residents of care facilities and people receiving services in their homes. About 70% of them live in rural areas, mainly in the Plains states and Midwest, Schema said.

Schema said many front-line workers in nursing homes found less stressful jobs after working through the worst days of the covid pandemic, when they had to wear extra protective gear and routinely get screened for infection in the face of ongoing risk.

Lori Porter, chief executive officer of the National Association of Health Care Assistants, said nursing home staffing issues have been building for years. “No one that’s been in this business is in shock over the way things are,” she said. “The pandemic put a spotlight on it.”

Porter, who has worked as a certified nursing assistant and as a nursing home administrator, said the industry should highlight how rewarding the work can be and how working as an aide can lead to a higher-paying job, including as a registered nurse.

Care industry leaders say that they have increased wages for front-line workers but that they can’t always keep up with other industries. They say that’s largely because they rely on payments from Medicaid, the government program for low-income Americans that covers the bills for more than 60% of people living in nursing homes.

In recent years, most states have increased how much their Medicaid programs pay to nursing homes, but those rates are still less than what the facilities receive from other insurers or from residents paying their own way. In Iowa, Medicaid pays nursing homes about $215 per day per resident, according to the Iowa Health Care Association. That compares with about $253 per day for people paying their own way. When nursing homes provide short-term rehabilitation for Medicare patients, they receive about $450 per day. That federal program does not cover long-term care, however.

Willett said a recent survey found that 72% of Iowa’s remaining nursing homes were freezing or limiting admissions below their capacity.

The Prairie View nursing home in Sanborn is one of them. The facility, owned by a local nonprofit, is licensed for up to 73 beds. Lately, it has been able to handle only about 48 residents, said administrator Wendy Nelson.

“We could take more patients, but we couldn’t give them the care they deserve,” she said.

Prairie View’s painful choices have included closing a 16-bed dementia care unit last year.

Nelson has worked in the industry for 22 years, including 17 at Prairie View. It never has been easy to keep nursing facilities fully staffed, she said. But the pandemic added stress, danger, and hassles.

“It drained the crud out of some people. They just said, ‘I’m done with it,’” she said.

Prairie View has repeatedly boosted pay, with certified nursing assistants now starting at $21 per hour and registered nurses at $40 per hour, Nelson said. But she’s still seeking more workers.

She realizes other rural employers also are stretched.

“I know we’re all struggling,” Nelson said. “Dairy Queen’s struggling too, but Dairy Queen can change their hours. We can’t.”

David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, said some of the shuttered care facilities had poor safety records. Those closures might not seem like a tragedy, especially in metro areas with plenty of other choices, he said.

“We might say, ‘Maybe that’s the market working, the way a bad restaurant or a bad hotel is closing,’” he said. But in rural areas, the closure of even a low-quality care facility can leave a hole that’s hard to fill.

For many families, the preferred alternative would be in-home care, but there’s also a shortage of workers to provide those services, he said.

The result can be prolonged hospital stays for patients who could be served instead in a care facility or by home health aides, if those services were available.

Rachel Olson, a social worker at Pocahontas Community Hospital in northwestern Iowa, said some patients wait a month or more in her hospital while she tries to find a spot for them in a nursing home once they’re stable enough to be transferred.

She said it’s particularly hard to place certain types of patients, such as those who need extra attention because they have dementia or need intravenous antibiotics.

Olson starts calling nursing homes close to the patient’s home, then tries ones farther away. She has had to place some people up to 60 miles away from their hometowns. She said families would prefer she find something closer. “But when I can’t, I can’t, you know? My hands are tied.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Wave of rural nursing home closures grows amid staffing crunch is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Two recently unemployed Chinese nationals weigh their options in a cramped Park Falls, Wisconsin, motel room, not far from where they worked in a former paper mill now being used to mine cryptocurrency.

One of them continues to nurse a stitched-up laceration across his left wrist from an on-the-job injury after he tripped while carrying a computer in August, a few months before he was let go.

Speaking in their native Mandarin, Aaron and Justin — as they refer to themselves in English — came to the United States on visas that allowed them to visit temporarily for “business activities” but not to take jobs in America. The two said they thought they had a long-term future helping a global company, SOS Limited, establish a cryptocurrency mining operation in North America, one of just two known facilities in Wisconsin. 

What they found were what they described as unsafe working conditions and possible skirting of immigration and labor laws. Wisconsin Watch is not publishing their names because they are concerned about their legal status to work in the United States.

The two said they were abruptly fired and spent weeks holed up in the motel until they belatedly got their final month’s salary from their employer. 

Their story is among several troubling signs that the company, which has just a handful of employees based in Park Falls, may not deliver the type of economic boost Park Falls was seeking when the city loaned one of SOS Limited’s current partners $1 million to revive the paper mill, which once employed hundreds of workers. The company’s two other announced North American cryptocurrency mining sites, including one in Marinette County, are also stalled.

Since August, Bitcoin has lost almost three quarters of its cash value. And over the past two years, SOS Limited has seen 94% of its share value erased after raising more than $600 million from investors. 

The story of the two Chinese nationals is also part of a larger tale about an economically challenged Midwestern mill town and the shadowy industry that produces Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies.

Cryptocurrency mining operations were prohibited in China in 2021 due to concerns over criminal activity and economic stability. They’ve since moved to countries with laxer regulations such as the United States.

“The (Chinese) government banned crypto mining operations in the country,” Aaron said. “Then, we saw an online post about hiring workers to the U.S.”

Crypto business takes root in rural Wisconsin

A combination of local, regional and global factors brought two Chinese citizens to a town of 2,400 people in rural Price County, one of the least populated in the state.

For decades, Park Falls was a company town centered on the iconic Flambeau River paper mill built along the banks to harness hydroelectric power to run the plant.

“It meant a lot to this community,” said John Tapplin, a former mill employee who was president of the local union. “At one time it was probably dumping like a quarter million dollars every two weeks into the economy.”

But the mill’s future has been uncertain since its longtime owner sold it in 2006. It operated for little more than a decade, temporarily shutting down in 2019.

Then New Jersey-based businessman Yong Liu and several investors stepped in and restarted operations the next year, buoying hopes that the paper mill could return to being the economic heart of the community. Some employees were called back to work.

The city issued a $1 million bridge loan to keep things running, but in the end a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and depressed commodity prices killed the business, recalled Mayor Michael Bablick.

“It was sort of a slow drip for quite a while,” he said. “Finally, it just went down and just couldn’t seem to find its way back open again.”

The mill was sold off at auction to a liquidator. A number of creditors, including the city of Park Falls, went to court for payment. The judge ordered Liu’s business interests to pay the remaining $828,108 of the loan earlier — a process that’s still underway.

Since then, the current owner has farmed out some of the space to various companies while dismantling other parts of the mill.

“They’re doing, I think, all the things you’d expect a liquidator to do,” Bablick said. “They’re removing equipment, they’re removing valuable copper, things like that.”

Bitcoin mining comes to Park Falls

Last year SOS Limited, whose shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, began installing racks of computers inside the former paper mill to mine cryptocurrencies.

“The company’s vision is to become one of the leading block-chain technology service providers in North America,” it wrote in a filing with financial regulators, referring to one of the key components of how cryptocurrencies are created and maintained.

Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, have emerged over the past decade as a form of digital currency created by sophisticated computers solving complex computational problems to create unique strings of information. Mining operations compete with each other to work out these complex problems, thereby creating a digital currency that can be traded on the open market for hard currencies including U.S. dollars. 

The Chinese government has long been hostile to digital currencies, partly because it’s difficult to regulate them, but also because the computers use massive amounts of energy, which has raised environmental concerns.

In a recent 46-page report, the White House estimated the greenhouse gas footprint of electricity  powering U.S. cryptocurrency production in  2021 was equivalent to the average annual greenhouse gas emissions from 3 million gas-powered automobiles. The United States now hosts about one-third of global Bitcoin asset mining, the report said.

In Park Falls, the arrival in early 2022 of a cryptocurrency operation received a cool reception.

“The city does not believe this use is the best use of the property in terms of jobs for our area, however, that is a matter solely for the owner of the mill to decide,” City Administrator Brentt Michaelek stated on the Park Falls Facebook page.

Even so, the site’s industrial zoning meant the city couldn’t stop it.

“Our legal analysis, and I think it’s pretty common sense, (is) that you can probably run computer servers if you can run a paper mill,” Bablick said.

Officials also found cryptocurrency mining preferable to the alternative: a fallow and blighted mill in the center of the city. 

“Things can really go wrong in a huge industrial facility real quick when there’s nobody there,” he added.

SOS Limited embroiled in controversy

SOS Limited’s arrival in Wisconsin coincided with the company’s public acknowledgment that it’s under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“The company intends to cooperate with the SEC with respect to the investigation,” SOS Limited wrote in a Feb. 25 filing with the financial regulator.

The SEC served a subpoena to the company following allegations of fraud raised by a pair of investment firms that publicize — and then profit from — publicly traded companies that mislead investors.

The investment firms’ critical reports, published in February 2021, questioned the company’s legitimacy as a cryptocurrency operation.

Hindenburg Research, which publishes information and makes stock bets on what it suspects are failing companies, seized on SOS Limited’s publicity photos of another one of its alleged equipment suppliers. Other sources suggested that the photos were actually from an entirely different — and unconnected — Chinese cryptocurrency operation.

Another research firm released information that the company purportedly supplying SOS Limited with $20 million worth of computer equipment to mine cryptocurrencies was actually a shell company created to give the illusion of progress.

“We find the company’s claims regarding its supposed cryptocurrency mining purchases and acquisitions to be extremely problematic, if not fabricated entirely,” Culper Research wrote in its Feb. 26, 2021 report. 

The allegations came from short-seller investors who place bets that a stock’s price will fall. That’s controversial, but the researchers defend their methods, saying they shine a light on corporate misdeeds.

“Our business model is to find fraud and bet against companies that we think are engaging in fraud,” Hindenburg’s Nate Anderson told Wisconsin Watch. “So our positioning is aligned with our beliefs.”

Anderson said there are questionable lines in SOS Limited’s recent regulatory filings that show $307 million of the more than $600 million raised by shareholders are “unspecified receivables,” meaning the company has not detailed what it’s doing with roughly half the money that has poured in from investors.

SOS Limited executives and attorneys did not answer questions emailed by Wisconsin Watch. But in a March 2021 web statement, the company denied what it calls “distorted, misleading, and unsubstantiated claims” and pledged to answer its critics. 

“SOS stands behind the integrity of the company and remains committed to maintaining transparency and the highest ethical principles,” it said in a lengthy web statement.

$5 million settlement reached

The company has agreed to pay $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit by former shareholders who had sued following the allegations raised by the research firms. SOS Limited admitted no wrongdoing, but it also did not answer the core allegation contained in the complaint.

“There has been a distinct lack of communication from SOS on its business operations, and its questionable deals,” Anderson said. “And it seems clear that shareholders want the answers to those questions.”

But some investors hope the problems are more of a cultural disconnect than evidence of fraud. 

József Gazsó said he has bought about $32,000 worth of SOS stock since March 2020. He also handled investments for friends and family in his native Hungary.

“This move to the U.S. was a good business move,” Gazsó told Wisconsin Watch from Budapest, where he works in logistics. “If they prove that they can mine in a safe and economic way, with renewable (energy) they have a huge upside potential.”

He said his own firm in Hungary does business with a large Chinese company that’s often averse to the type of investor relations and normal publicity that U.S. shareholders demand. He admitted he sometimes doubts the company will continue to issue new share offerings while showing little public progress in cryptocurrency mining.

“If the company is a scam, I have been a fool,” he texted after an interview with Wisconsin Watch. 

Wisconsin expansion put on ice

The cryptocurrency operation quietly expanded in early 2022 by beginning to move its equipment outside the confines of the mill’s thick walls. 

The din of computers and cooling equipment has been a problem in other parts of the country including Niagara Falls, New York, a city that’s used to the roar of North America’s largest waterfall. 

In Park Falls, Michaelek, the city administrator, said officials noticed the expansion had begun without the owner pulling any permits.

“They were starting to put footings outside the building,” he said. “We told them you can’t do that.”

The company came back with an application, but it was voted down in August because there was no engineering survey on how much noise the outdoor operation would generate.

While that was happening, SOS investors hungry for updates looked to the Price County Review, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Phillips, the county seat, for updates on the cryptocurrency operation.

Company executives shared a write-up in the local newspaper, one of the few reports of progress on the ground after SOS had raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors.

The company last June released a short video, a rare public statement about its cryptocurrency operation in Wisconsin. It showed the interior of the Park Falls operation. The video was evidence of cryptocurrency mining at the first of three U.S. sites it had announced in April 2021. 

That announcement described a partnership with U.S.-based holding companies with power agreements in Park Falls; Stacyville, Maine; and Niagara, Wisconsin.

“If and when the site operations get underway, the company anticipates it will create significant jobs (sic) opportunities in the U.S.,” the company wrote in an April 2021 press release.

Crypto future unclear

But experts in Wisconsin are skeptical that cryptocurrency mining operations will ever offer meaningful employment after they are up and running.

“It’s analogous to some other things like data centers,” said Tom Still of the Wisconsin Technology Council, a Madison-based nonpartisan advocate for the state’s tech industry. “You know, a lot goes into them in terms of construction but not necessarily a lot of employment afterwards.”

Cryptocurrency production is largely unregulated in the United States, and it’s unknown how many are in operation in Wisconsin. Still said he’s aware of only one other cryptocurrency mine in the state: Digital Power Optimization’s facility in the town of Hatfield, about 50 miles southeast of Eau Claire. The operation runs on renewable energy.

Alex Stoewer, chief operating officer of New York-based Digital Power Optimization, said his firm’s model of partnering with renewable energy producers is keeping it in the black.

“Despite the difficulties in the broader crypto market, this operation continues to generate positive cash flow, much of which is being reinvested in a maintenance plan for the hydro infrastructure, canal and dam,” he said in a written statement.

SOS expansion slowed elsewhere

“The only information we ever had about it was inquiries from reporters, or from potential investors,” she told Wisconsin Watch.

Aside from Park Falls, SOS Limited’s other two projects in Maine and in Niagara, Wisconsin, have yet to materialize. Niagara city administrator Audrey Fredrick said there has been no activity on the site of a former paper mill since April 2021, when the company announced its plans in the city of 1,600 people in Marinette County along the Menominee River.

But she said there have been reports of people traveling to the city near Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to see if there was anything happening.

“People tried to sneak on the site,” Fredrick said. “Like, investors who felt they were duped, and of course the site is secure because there’s a landfill … and dangerous because there’s a dam there — but no, there’s nothing.”

SOS Limited’s U.S. partner in the three sites is Liu, who for nearly two years had owned the Park Falls mill. Reached briefly on his cellphone, he told Wisconsin Watch that so far only the Park Falls site has broken ground since there were technical hurdles in Maine and his company has yet to finalize a power buying agreement for the Niagara site in Marinette County. 

“But we built one in Texas in Fort Stockton,” he added.

To date, there’s been no mention of cryptocurrency mining in Texas in any of SOS’s regulatory filings. 

Immigration questions loom

Asked about the employment of Chinese nationals without work visas in Wisconsin, Liu said the men were contracted by clients in China that lease capacity to mine cryptocurrencies.

“That’s not our employees,” he said.

A contract signed by Aaron and reviewed by Wisconsin Watch shows he was employed by Shenzhen Beibeizhu Technology, also known as BBZ. The company is a main supplier of equipment to SOS Limited, and some shareholders have questioned in online forums the true nature of the two companies’ relationship.

Aaron also signed a contract with SOS Limited’s U.S. subsidiary.

“I have been communicating with the Shenzhen-based company for the promised work visa and job contract since my arrival,” Aaron said.

It wasn’t until after the two were dismissed that Aaron learned the SOS Limited’s U.S. contract wasn’t signed by the company. 

And despite Aaron’s arm injury, he had to continue lifting heavy equipment as part of the job.

Ming Luo, the site supervisor in Park Falls, declined to comment.

“My company said that I should not talk too much,” he said. 

He referred questions back to Liu, who did not respond to subsequent calls and messages.

Attorneys who advise undocumented immigrants said it appears both the employer and employees may have broken the law.

“In some ways, they’re both at risk because they have both potentially done things that are contrary to our immigration laws,” said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. 

She said the two Chinese nationals run the risk of being arrested by federal authorities for working without the proper permits. But she said there’s evidence suggesting they were lured under false pretenses by being offered a contract with the U.S. company, which means the employers could also be held responsible. 

“It’s a very strange situation,” she added.

Keeping the lights on

Bablick, the Park Falls mayor, said the former paper mill is being underutilized as a cryptocurrency mine. And he said he’s troubled by reports of workers going unpaid.

“The (mill) owners could have done better as far as getting tenants in there, that would have been very useful for the town, and I tried to work with them,” he said. “It’s just, they made a business decision. It made sense for them. It wasn’t the best for us.”

Still, he said, Park Falls is a resilient town that’s weathered the transition remarkably well.

“But I almost feel like the way it went away the last time was probably the best possible time,” he said, “just because of the labor market constrictions and just the way the economy is.”

A worker-friendly labor market has meant that many former mill workers have found employment elsewhere. A decade ago, he said, there would have been lines of unemployed.

“Even though they’re probably not making as much money as they used to be, they at least had an opportunity to find a job,” he added.

Chinese workers seek new start 

In the weeks after being dismissed from their job and offered a flight back to China without any guarantee of payment for their last month of work, Aaron and Justin spent several weeks in their hotel room, uncertain of their next move.

“They have been asking me to go back to work, but I don’t want to,” Aaron told Wisconsin Watch on Dec. 6.

Days later, they left Park Falls for good. By the middle of the month, they received their final salaries. Justin and Aaron are staying with friends in Chicago to figure out a way to remain in the United States.

They said they didn’t encounter any prejudice against them personally during their time in Park Falls, but there was at least one unsettling sign that the foreign presence is unwelcome.

Inside the mill on a brick wall somebody scrawled in yellow paint a racist slur targeting the Chinese.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

In rural Wisconsin, former employees lift curtain on troubled crypto mine is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.