Brian Dake

Judge Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th Supreme Court justice in a private ceremony Saturday just hours after the Senate voted to confirm him, solidifying conservative control of the highest court in the land for years to come and ending a bitter battle over his nomination.

The final Senate vote was 50-48. Sen. Joe Manchin was the only Democrat to break ranks and vote in favor of him.

President Trump congratulated Kavanaugh on Twitter and called him a “great nominee.” He signed Kavanaugh’s commission to the Supreme Court aboard Air Force One so he could get to work immediately on the court.

He will hear his first cases next week.

According to FEMA’s damage assessments following August and September’s severe flooding across the state, over $37 million in damage was done, prompting a request for a federal disaster declaration from Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday for Wisconsin counties damaged by flooding.

The request includes Adams, Crawford, Dane, Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Juneau, La Crosse, Marquette, Monroe, Ozaukee, Richland, Sauk, and Vernon counties for both public assistance and individual assistance. He requested public assistance only for Iron County and individual assistance only for Columbia, Jefferson and Washington counties.

Last week, FEMA conducted damage assessments in the impacted areas, finding the cost of local government response and estimated damage totaling over $37.2 million. The review also found that 370 private homes were destroyed or suffered major damage, and 925 received minor damage.

If President Trump allows the federal disaster declaration, Wisconsin will become eligible for FEMA funds.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald announced Tuesday morning the Legislature will call an extraordinary session Nov. 12 for a public hearing in the Senate on an incentive package for Kimberly-Clark with plans for a floor vote later next month.

The package, which includes Foxconn-like incentives that would help keep open a plant in the Fox Valley, cleared the Assembly in February. But it has bogged down in the Senate amid concerns over the cost to taxpayers, as well as the precedent it would set to offer such significant incentives to retain jobs.

Senator Roger called the planned extraordinary session “great news,” while Gov. Scott Walker, who backs the package, called the development a “major step forward” in keeping the plant open.

“My message to Kimberly-Clark employees is simple: we are fighting for you. We are working together to keep your jobs in Wisconsin,” Walker said.

Kimberly-Clark officials had set a Sept. 30 deadline for lawmakers to act on the package as the company weighed a final decision on whether to keep open a plant in the Fox Valley. But state and company officials continued to meet through the weekend as some backers of the package urged the company to give lawmakers until after the Nov. 6 election to act.

The bill the Assembly passed included a boost in tax credits for job retention to 17 percent, up from the current 7 percent. Kimberly-Clark would also get refundable tax credits for 15 percent of capital expenditures, up from the typical 10 percent, over a five-year period. The company would also get a five-year sales tax exemption on those expenditures.

Fitzgerald’s office said the plan is to proceed on the bill in its current form.

Uncompensated care is on the rise as hospitals in Wisconsin and around the country are seeing an increase in unpaid medical bills. In Wisconsin, it’s topped a billion dollars.

In 2017, 150 hospitals in Wisconsin had $1.1 billion of uncompensated health care services, this includes both charity care and bad debt. It’s an increase from 14 percent from 2016. Hospitals in Milwaukee County alone accounted for nearly 30 percent of the overall total, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association report.

Nationally, uncompensated care at hospitals around the United States was more than $38 billion in 2016.

The report on Wisconsin hospitals doesn’t give an explanation for the rise in unpaid medical bills and WHA officials weren’t available for comment. But those who advocate for more access to health coverage note uncompensated care levels haven’t exceeded a billion dollars since 2014, when key elements of the Affordable Care Act took effect.

The United States and Canada agreed to a deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement shortly before a midnight deadline.

In a joint statement, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the agreement “will strengthen the middle class, and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly half billion people who call North America home.”

The plan is for the leaders of the three North American countries to sign before the end of November, after which it would be submitted to Congress.

The negotiations between American and Canadian officials involved offering more market access to U.S. dairy farmers, as well as Canada agreeing to an arrangement effectively capping automobile exports to the United States.

The deal will also modernize what was covered by NAFTA by adding provisions on digital trade and intellectual property, the administration official said.

The trade pact will come up for review every six years, which will give the U.S. a “significant new form of leverage” to make sure the arrangement is to its liking, according to the senior American official.

“It’s a good day for Canada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. “We celebrate a trilateral deal. The door closes on trade fragmentation in the region,” Jesus Seade, trade negotiator for Mexico’s incoming president, said via Twitter.

A new report from the Tax Foundation ranks Wisconsin 32nd in the nation for state business tax climate, an improvement of three spots from last year but also a return to the state’s ranking in 2016.

Jared Walczak, the report’s lead author, said Wisconsin’s improvement was primarily the result of changes by other states. He added that over the last five to ten years the state has seen a reduced reliance on property taxes and “a modest improvement” in its ranking.

The report from the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit seeks to measure how effectively a state raises revenue using 100 different variables. It evaluates a state’s taxation in five major areas based on each area’s variability compared to the national average.

Wisconsin performed best on the sales tax portion of the index, ranking 8th in the country. The index rewards states that allow exclusions for business inputs and have low general rates and a broad base. The report included Wisconsin among the state’s as having “well-structured sales taxes and modest excise tax rates.”

The property tax component takes into account property tax rates using U.S. Census data and each state’s tax base. The rates component includes per capita collections, property tax collections as a percent of personal income and capital stock taxes. The base element includes variables on whether a state levies inheritance, estate, gift, inventory, or intangible property taxes. Wisconsin ranks 21st on the property tax measure.

Wisconsin ranks 35th in the country on the corporate tax rate component. The index penalizes states that have high or complex rate systems and those that rely on business tax credits.

Wisconsin ranks 39th on individual income tax, in the largest component of the index. States with no income tax generally receive a perfect score while the report also rewards those with flat, low-tax systems with few deductions or exemptions. Complex, multi-rate systems typically score lower.

The smallest component of the index is unemployment insurance tax, where Wisconsin ranks 41st.

The top ranked business tax states overall include Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, Montana and Florida. The worst are Arkansas, Connecticut, New York, California and New Jersey.

Among neighboring states, only Michigan outranks Wisconsin at 13th. Illinois is 36th, Minnesota is 43rd and Iowa is 45th.

Cybercriminals posing as HR staff have set their sights on a new target: online payroll accounts, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned.

Hackers are attempting to dupe unsuspecting employees into giving up their payroll information, such as their bank account number and passcode, through a phishing scam, authorities from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said.

The phishing scam starts off as an email from HR personnel asking the account owner to update or verify their direct deposit credentials.

The fake message prompts the account owner to click on a link to a dummy website – presumably a mock-up of a company’s employee portal – where the account owner will be forced to enter their username and password.

“Once the cybercriminal has obtained an employee’s credentials, the credentials are used to access the employee’s payroll account in order to change their bank account information,” the FBI said

Cybercriminals take the extra step of locking out employees from their own account.

“Rules are added by the cybercriminal to the employee’s account preventing the employee from receiving alerts regarding direct deposit changes,” investigators said. “Direct deposits are then changed and redirected to an account controlled by the cybercriminal, which is often a prepaid card.”

The FBI is urging HR personnel to alert their workforce to the phishing scam. Employees should also refrain from supplying account details in response to email prompts, and should set up two-factor authentication on their account.

Authorities said employees from the education, health care, and transport sectors have been affected.

Today, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) issued its State Snapshots ranking, naming Wisconsin fourth in the nation for highest overall health care quality among all 50 states – and Wisconsin ranks first in the Midwest.

AHRQ’s State  Snapshots web tool helps state health leaders, researchers, consumers, and others understand the status of health care quality in states, including each state’s strengths. The AHRQ uses more than 120 statistical measures to evaluate health care performance across care settings, including access to care and patient safety. AHRQ began issuing its State Snapshots in 2006, and Wisconsin has consistently ranked in the top four states in 10 of 12 years (AHRQ did not issue a report in 2012) – and was ranked first in the nation in 2006, 2008, and 2017. Wisconsin was ranked second in the U.S. in 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2015.

“Providers, administrators, patients, and families are working together in effective partnerships, across care settings locally and regionally – and that shows,” said WHA President and CEO Eric Borgerding. “Wisconsin is a national leader and is known for its high quality, high-value health care. These rankings reflect not only outstanding performance today, but more importantly, a trend spanning over a decade demonstrating a sustained commitment to affordable, accessible, quality health care that our members deliver each and every day.”

Earlier this year, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration announced that Wisconsin’s Critical Access Hospitals were named fourth in the nation, according to the Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement Program. The program ranks states based on quality data reporting and performance. A Critical Access Hospital (CAH) is often located in a rural part of the state, and it provides short-term hospital stays when someone has a severe injury or illness, an urgent medical condition, or is recovering from surgery. CAHs help provide essential health care services locally, particularly in areas of the state where the next town may be 35 miles or so away.