Wisconsin

Daycare. Diapers. Dilemmas about paying bills or buying food. Parents struggle. | Opinion

Published

2 years ago

February 14, 2024

Press Room

Survey shows inflation, cost of childcare and affording food weighs on Wisconsin parents

Sarah Halpern-Meekin
| Special to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Money is always on a parent’s mind, and perhaps especially so at this time of year. We’re just coming out of the holiday season, which can be costly for many. Tax season is creeping up, bringing refunds for some and payments to the IRS for others. Congress is currently debating legislation that could increase the Child Tax Credit, so parents are waiting to learn if they’ll get more tax relief. And families are looking ahead to the summer, when camp slots need to be secured and paid for.

Families with young children face their own unique challenges as they raise the next generation who are in this key stage of development. Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are going through amazing changes at these ages — it’s a foundational stage of physical, socioemotional, and cognitive development that sets the stage for their futures. It’s also a high-stakes time for parents, and one that is compounded by many financial stressors.

Through the WisconSays/La Follette Survey, we at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have tried to learn more about the perspectives and needs of these families of young children. This topic is part of our yearlong Main Street Agenda project that we hope will shed light on the issues that matter to Wisconsin residents as we approach the 2024 election. My colleague, J. Michael Collins, kicked things off last month by discussing Wisconsin residents’ feelings of financial security overall.

Income inequality, wealth and inflation on minds of parents

In this portion of the survey, conducted out of the UW Survey Center, we asked nearly 4,000 Wisconsinites about their most pressing concerns, and we saw how the concerns of families with young children may have been distinct from those of other households. The top two most pressing concerns we saw were inflation and the unequal distribution of income and wealth. While families with young children were like other households in their level of concern about income inequality (47% vs. 50%), they were more likely to cite inflation as a concern (75% vs. 63%).

Can you afford an emergency? UW survey shows many don’t have $400 to spare. Blame inflation.

While inflation has recently slowed and the economy is in good shape overall, these data show that parents of young children are still worried about the effects of the recent inflationary period that stemmed largely from the financial turmoil brought on by the pandemic. The survey was conducted in the second half of 2023 as inflation was just coming under control, so it will be interesting to see how parents feel about inflation if it continues to decline throughout the year. Since this is a panel survey that will continue to ask these questions of the participants, this will be a measure we will be monitoring closely.

It’s no surprise that parents of young children are so attuned to inflation. The time after a child joins a family can be a particularly financially vulnerable period for many, even in the best of economic times.

To start, most new parents in the United States do not have paid family leave (and some have no unpaid leave), so taking time to recover from giving birth and to care for a new child can come at the cost of lost wages or even leaving the labor force. Currently, 11 states plus the District of Columbia offer paid family and medical leave; Wisconsin isn’t one of them.

Diapers alone can run parents $1,000 in first year of child’s life

On top of that lost income, families with young children face some heavy costs, such as diapers, wipes, and formula. Diapers alone can cost about $1,000 in that first year of life. A part of that cost in Wisconsin is paying for the sales taxes the state levies on diapers. Many other types of medical supplies are not subject to such a tax. The cost of diapers, though, pales in comparison to the cost of child care. In Wisconsin, like many other states, it can be cheaper to pay in-state college tuition than for child care — costing about $13,000 a year per child.

Wisconsin child care faces meltdown. We all lose if daycare centers close doors.

Although child care-related issues have received an array of recent attention in the legislature, it also ended pandemic-era funding that had buoyed child care centers in recent years. Without a state-level solution, some counties have been exploring how best to address child care needs and costs in their areas. To that end, La Follette graduate students have recently helped the counties of La Crosse and Outagamie to conduct in-depth research into their own child care solutions.

In light of all that, it is not surprising that families with young children in our survey are more likely than other households to say it is difficult for them to cover all their expenses in a typical month—more than a third of families with young children say this is an issue compared to less than a quarter of other households. They are also less confident they could manage an unexpected expense (40% vs. 50%). Concerningly, 40% of families with young children report dealing with food insecurity, compared to 25% of other households. Managing financial concerns can mean more stressed parents and fewer resources for children.

Even if we don’t have young children ourselves, it affects the long-term prospects of the state of Wisconsin if families with young children can thrive. To ensure that Wisconsin’s foundation is as sound as possible, it’s imperative that we support the families raising the next generation. This calls for broad attention to their concerns in the upcoming local, state, and federal elections.

Sarah Halpern-Meekin is a Professor of Public Affairs with the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Vaughn Bascom Professor of Women, Family, and Community in the School of Human Ecology.

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Wisconsin

New Wisconsin AD Shawn Eichorst: Badgers Need ‘Texas Swagger’ And Less Humility

Published

1 hour ago

July 9, 2026

Press Room

New Wisconsin AD Shawn Eichorst: Badgers Need ‘Texas Swagger’ And Less Humility

New Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst, who spent the last eight years at Texas, believes his new and old schools have much in common.

Both are well-regarded research universities in state capitals that belong to major conferences and have relatively similar enrollments.

He also pointed out one difference.

“There’s swag at Texas, right?” Eichorst said Tuesday during his introductory news conference. “There’s 30 million people in Texas. We’ve got swag, too, but we have a little humility with that deal. We need to get our shoulders up. We need to feel good about what it is that we’re doing.”

Wisconsin could gain more of that Texas swagger if its football program gets back to winning the way it did the last time Eichorst was employed in Madison. Eichorst, who most recently worked as a deputy athletic director at Texas, received a five-year deal worth $1.6 million annually, with provisions for increases and incentives. He was hired 2½ months after Chris McIntosh left to become the Big Ten’s deputy commissioner for strategy.

Eichorst worked at Wisconsin from 2006-11 when Barry Alvarez was AD and Bret Bielema was leading the football program. He followed that up with stints as an athletic director at Miami (2011-12) and Nebraska (2012-17) before Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte hired him in 2018.

He returns to Wisconsin with the Badgers coming off back-to-back losing seasons in football, a notable fall for a program that had 22 straight winning seasons from 2002-23. Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell has gone 17-21 after posting a 53-10 record with one College Football Playoff appearance in his last five years at Cincinnati.

Eichorst hasn’t worked with Fickell before but said he’s encouraged by their initial conversations.

“Obviously he’s won every place he’s been,” Eichorst said. “My expectation is more of me than him, meaning I need to pour into him, learn more about his program, how he has things set up, how his athletes are taken care of, how we’re supporting that endeavor. And then we can figure out, as we move along, what that might look like.”

Football struggles led to Eichorst’s downfall the last time he was an athletic director.

He fired Nebraska coach Bo Pelini in 2014 and hired Mike Riley, who had gone 93-80 in 14 seasons at Oregon State. Eichorst was dismissed shortly after Nebraska suffered an early-season loss to Northern Illinois in 2017. Riley was fired at the end of that season after going 19-19 in three years.

When Eichorst’s hiring was announced last week, he spoke about how much he had grown from that Nebraska stint. Wisconsin interim chancellor Eric Wilcots led the search and has emphasized Eichorst’s accomplishments at Texas, which has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup all-sports standings five times in the last six years.

Texas ranked anywhere from fifth to ninth in the Directors’ Cup standings in the five years before Wilcots’ arrival. Texas’ football team went a combined 23-27 from 2014-17 but has made two College Football Playoff appearances in the last three years.

“Everybody looks at the end result of what we did at Texas,” Eichorst said. “When we got there in 2018, we weren’t very good in a lot of areas. And that didn’t change overnight.”

Eichorst said one thing that has caught his attention about Wisconsin is the overall quality of its head coaches.

“You’re going to be as good as your coaches,” Eichorst said. “That’s it. If you have an elite group of coaches who are working together and uniting and galvanizing and learning from one another and taking it out to their individual programs, I think you can start to build something special. I go back to Texas. We built a room of really elite head coaches and put them at the top of everything we did to help guide us.”

Eichorst said this job is particularly important to him because of his Wisconsin roots. He was born in Lone Rock, about 45 miles northwest of the Madison campus.

He treasured his previous stint at Wisconsin and says he believes this school “represents everything that is great about higher education and college athletics.”

“Nobody will work harder for Wisconsin athletics,” Eichorst said. “I love this state, and I love everything that it represents. The passion is there. You can see it. I don’t have to make it up. I’ve lived it. It’s in my heart.”

___

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

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Wisconsin

South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, officials in standoff with homeowner over year-round skeleton display

Published

11 hours ago

July 8, 2026

Press Room

South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, officials in standoff with homeowner over year-round skeleton display

CBS Chicago Team

July 8, 2026 / 5:24 PM CDT
/ CBS Chicago

The city of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has ordered a homeowner to take down his year-round giant skeleton display or face fines, but the homeowner is standing firm and refusing, even as the deadline to remove the display has passed.

Now there’s a skeleton standoff.

The city cited ordinance violations in their order for Sean Oster to dismantle the lawn decorations. The notice specifically references “large Halloween decorations being displayed not during the appropriate time of year.”

Oster was also ordered to make other improvements to his property.

But Oster has refused to take down the display, which is re-dressed as the year goes on and is currently sporting a Fourth of July theme. The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, has come to his aid, saying the city’s actions violate Oster’s First Amendment rights.

City administrators declined to comment, citing a pending investigation. Neighbors have been divided by the display; some say they’re fine with it, and think it brings fun and positivity to the neighborhood, but some others want to see it removed and say the lawn should be kept up better and more consistently.

Oster said he’s hoping to reach an agreement with the city, and said he’s corrected all other violations outside of the display.

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Wisconsin

Former Wisconsin judge to be sentenced after conviction in obstructing arrest of Mexican immigrant

Published

22 hours ago

July 8, 2026

Press Room

Former Wisconsin judge to be sentenced after conviction in obstructing arrest of Mexican immigrant

Former Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted of felony obstruction for helping an immigrant evade federal officers in a case that highlighted President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in federal court.

Dugan, 67, faces up to five years in prison after a jury convicted her on Dec. 19. She resigned from her position as a Milwaukee County circuit judge two weeks later amid threats of impeachment from Republican state lawmakers. She had been a judge for nine years.

Trump administration tried to make an example out of Milwaukee judge

The Trump administration brought the case against Dugan as the president pressed ahead with his sweeping immigration crackdown. Trump’s administration and his allies branded Dugan as an activist judge, while Dugan’s attorneys said during the trial that the Trump administration was trying to make an example out of Dugan to “crush her.”

Immigrant rights advocates and other Dugan allies argued that the administration was trying to use her case to blunt judicial opposition to Trump’s immigration efforts. The case became a bellwether nationally in the conflict between the judiciary and Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a fierce Trump loyalist running for Wisconsin governor, urged authorities to “lock her up” in a social media post following her conviction.

Dugan’s attorneys declined to comment ahead of the sentencing. Dugan did not testify during her trial, but her attorneys said she would be making comments to the court on Wednesday. That would be her first public comments on the case in more than a year.

Prosecutors push for ‘serious sentence’

Dugan’s attorneys argued that as a judge she was immune from prosecution. U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, who will hand down the sentence, has rejected attempts by Dugan to vacate her obstruction conviction.

Prosecutors argued in a sentencing memo filed last week that Dugan violated her oath as a judge and put both law enforcement and the public at risk.

“Judges are entrusted with tremendous discretion, but there is a line they cannot cross,” Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Frohling wrote. “The defendant crossed that line.”

Dugan’s attorneys argued she has “punished enough,” including resigning as a judge and facing threats of violence. They argued in her sentencing memo that she should not be sentenced to any jail time besides the part of one day she already spent in federal custody.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, the presentence report calls for 15 to 21 months behind bars. The judge is not bound by those guidelines.

Prosecutors said the average sentence for obstruction cases is 16 months, but they did not recommend a sentence.

“This was a serious offense, and it warrants a correspondingly serious sentence,” Frohling wrote.

No matter what she is sentenced to, Dugan’s attorneys said they plan to file an appeal.

Dugan’s case was a first for Wisconsin

Dugan’s case marked the first time that a state judge in Wisconsin went to trial on charges of obstructing immigration agents. She was found not guilty of concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor.

On April 18, 2025, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.

Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and directed them to the chief judge’s office because she told them their administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.

After the agents left, she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. A week later, FBI agents arrested Dugan in the courthouse, leading her outside in handcuffs.

Flores-Ruiz was deported in November.

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