Wausau Pilot & Review

Social media posts that appeared to make a threat against Wausau and D.C. Everest schools have circulated widely since late last week, though investigators say there is no credible threat to student safety.

Part of a nationwide wave, threats are turning up on Snapchat and TikTok. Some include lists of schools while others warn students to hug their loved ones. Both platforms are apps popular among teens as a way to communicate with many friends at once.

The posts continued to get shared and reshared, creating a self-perpetuating echo chamber that became increasingly difficult to dispel.

In the Wausau area, students were concerned about a potential threat Friday morning on a viral Snapchat posting. Wausau Police and the FBI investigated the threat and determined there was no danger to students, school officials said.

In an email sent out to D.C. Everest families, Superintendent Casey Nye said several middle school students reported what they saw, prompting an investigation.

“We immediately worked with local law enforcement and our School Resource Officers and discovered that in recent weeks multiple reports of similar Snapchat threats have occurred nationwide,” Nye’s email reads.

“Similar incidents also were reported at multiple school districts in our area today and earlier this week, and were deemed non-credible. The Mountain Bay Metro Police Department has determined today’s incident is not a credible threat to any D.C. Everest school and will continue to investigate.”

When dealing with the unsettling trend of false threats to schools posted on social media, parents can play a pivotal role in ensuring their children’s safety and emotional well-being. Experts recommend that parents maintain an open line of communication with their children about their online activities and the content they find.

Encouraging children to speak up about any threatening or suspicious posts they see online and reassuring them that it’s safe to report these concerns to a trusted adult can help mitigate fear and confusion. Additionally, parents should stay informed about the digital platforms their children use and collaborate closely with school administrators to understand their protocols for handling such threats.

This proactive approach not only helps in managing the immediate risks associated with false threats but also contributes to fostering a secure and supportive environment for students both online and offline.

School and police officials urge students to report any such messages they receive to ensure a thorough investigation.

by Sky Chadde, Investigate Midwest, Investigate Midwest
September 11, 2024

The farmworkers scattered.

There was a union representative in the workers’ employer-provided housing, on an orchard in upstate New York. Their employer, major apple grower Porpiglia Farms, had hired them on H-2A, or temporary labor, visas. That day in August 2023, according to the workers’ union, United Farm Workers, the orchard’s owners burst in. The farmworkers ran or hid in their rooms.

Following the incident, the UFW filed a complaint with New York state, alleging the orchard prevented workers from exercising their rights. Porpiglia Farms disputed the UFW’s account and said it is working with the UFW. However, on that day, the UFW organizer had “trespassed” in an effort to “gin up a controversy,” Anthony Porpiglia, the owner, said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest by his attorneys. The workers “asked her to leave and she refused,” he said.

The following summer, workers arrived for harvest season. Near the orchard’s entrance, workers, whose union has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, noticed a new sign: “Farmers for Trump.”

The scuffle in the orchard epitomizes the division on immigration between the two presidential candidates and what could be at stake for immigrant workers, who have underpinned the agriculture industry for decades. While Donald Trump’s rhetoric targets its workforce, the industry, writ large, has favored the former president. President Joe Biden’s administration, with Kamala Harris as vice president, has instituted protections paving a path to more farmworker unionization, while also cracking down on border crossings.

A Harris victory would likely mean a continuation of Biden’s efforts — and renewed hope for a path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers. She’s publicly supported one for years. But farmworkers, who are essential to the U.S. economy, will still fear being uprooted regardless of who is president, said Laurie Beyranevand, director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

“At the end of the day, many farmworkers still fear deportation,” she said. “Obviously, that fear, I think, is more pronounced with a policy agenda like the Trump administration, but it’s not as though it’s not present with the Biden administration either.” 

Neither campaign responded to a request for comment on their immigration stances.

If re-elected, Trump has promised to deport upwards of 20 million undocumented people, many of them agricultural workers who perform the dangerous jobs most Americans don’t want. Trump supported the use of the H-2A program, which farmers said is necessary to fill labor shortages. But the former president’s close allies have recently proposed eliminating it.

Agriculture corporations have lavished Trump and Republicans with campaign cash. The disparity in spending on conservatives and liberals, in conservatives’ favor, increased during the Trump administration. Rural areas, a proxy for farmers, largely voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

In an interview with The New York Times, Stephen Miller, who led Trump’s immigration efforts during his administration, said the Trump campaign’s goal was to upend industries that rely on immigrant labor. 

“Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs,” he said.

Some research suggests deportations, especially at a large scale, could backfire on U.S. workers. In 2023, University of Colorado researchers estimated that, for every 1 million unauthorized workers deported, 88,000 native workers would lose jobs. When companies lose their labor forces, the researchers concluded, they find ways to use less labor, not replace their lost workers.

A historical example is the end of the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican workers into the U.S. for seasonal jobs. Instead of hiring more U.S. workers when their labor force was suddenly gone, farmers turned to heavy machinery, according to 2017 research. There was no corresponding increase in employment or wages for native workers.

Temporary labor visa programs have exploded in popularity. In 2023, the government granted about 400,000 H-2A visas. But America’s farms still depend on an undocumented workforce. Out of about 2 million farmworkers in the U.S., government surveys show about 44% are undocumented. (Hundreds of thousands of other workers in the food supply chain — meatpacking plants, grocery stores, restaurants — are also undocumented.)

“If we lost half of the farmworker population in a short period of time, the agriculture sector would likely collapse,” said Mary Jo Dudley, the director of the Cornell Farmworker Program. “There are no available skilled workers to replace the current workforce should this policy be put into place.”

Antonio De Loera-Brust, a UFW spokesman, said deporting millions would be nearly impossible logistically. The point of Trump’s rhetoric, he said, was to instill fear in farmworkers so they don’t demand their rights.

Farmers who support Trump are “voting basically to try to deny their workforce labor rights and to try to reduce their workforce’s wages,” De Loera-Brust said. “I don’t think you need to psychoanalyze it that much further beyond, ‘This is in their economic interest.’”

Investigate Midwest requested interviews with several industry groups to discuss the candidates’ stances on immigration and the potential impact on agriculture. The Meat Institute, which represents the meatpacking industry, said the immigration policy it supported was expanding the visa labor program to include its industry.

“Continued labor problems in the processing sector will hamper production and drive-up costs, hurting both upstream producers and downstream consumers,” Sarah Little, the group’s spokesperson, said in an email. “Efforts to address the labor needs of agriculture must consider both the production sector and the processing sector.”

However, most either didn’t respond or declined to comment. For example, the American Farm Bureau Federation, which positions itself as the voice of agriculture, said it does “not endorse candidates nor engage in election politics.” 

However, through political action committees, the bureau’s state affiliates endorse candidates. The federation’s current administrative head, Joby Young, was a high-ranking official in Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Farm labor is dangerous. In fields, workers risk pesticide exposure, which can cause skin rashes. Long-term exposure can cause cancer or contribute to developmental issues in offspring. Tractors have crushed limbs. Workers have died falling into grain bins.

The pay is also unappealing. Agriculture is exempt from federal overtime laws. Sometimes, workers are paid “piece rate,” meaning their earnings depend on how much they harvest in a day.

In meatpacking plants, workers perform the same motion, over and over, with sharp knives. Workers have suffered tendinitis, lacerations and amputations. Because it’s so difficult, plants sometimes gradually increase newbies’ hours: It’s called “break-in pain.” And, as the COVID-19 pandemic struck, plant workers were forced to return to their jobs, exposing themselves and their families to the virus.

Many U.S. citizens do not want jobs like this, Dudley said. Sometimes, farmers feel they have no choice but to overlook suspect IDs.

“These are valued employees,” an anonymous farmer told Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after he suspected U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were surveilling his employees. “We get their IDs and everything. Do we know if they’re legal or illegal? Well, we’re going to say we’re open on that. We don’t know that they are, we don’t know that they aren’t. But they are employees and they are the most hard-working people that you can find.”

One of those workers, for decades, was Gloria Solis. In 1998, she left Mexico, where she struggled to afford food and rent, and began picking cherries in Washington state. When Trump was in office, she tried to stay home as much as possible, fearing an interaction with authorities that might lead to deportation. She mostly risked it for her job and for medical appointments for her two sons, who are U.S. citizens, she said in Spanish through an interpreter. Each time, she prayed.

Some of her employers seemed emboldened by Trump, and the employers made it clear that, if she and her coworkers didn’t work hard enough, they could be easily replaced. When Biden was elected, she said, there was a noticeable change. Workers with legal status and workers who were undocumented were treated much more fairly, Solis, now 47, said.

“We know that (Biden) is no longer in it, but there is his partner,” she said. “Hopefully nothing will change (as far as administration policy) because it’s perfectly fine. We are afraid that Trump will be elected. If he gets elected, then we won’t know what to do.”

Trump raids included ag job sites; Biden secured worker protections

Throughout Trump’s administration, immigration authorities raided farms and food processing plants. When Biden was elected, he reversed Trump’s directives. Instead of targeting workers, Biden focused on exploitative employers.

Under Trump, some of the most prominent agriculture companies in the U.S. dealt with immigration raids. In 2018, Christensen Farms — which owns two of the largest pork processing plants in the U.S., Seaboard Foods in Oklahoma and Triumph Foods in Missouri — was caught up in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement action. In 2019, raids in Mississippi rounded up about 700 undocumented workers. Some worked for Koch Foods, which supplies much of the poultry at Wal-Mart.

While the raids barely made a dent in the agricultural workforce, they had an effect. Many farmworkers feared speaking up about workplace abuses, said Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli, a National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition advocacy coordinator who previously worked as a Florida farmworker advocate.

“They felt like they couldn’t raise their voices about concerns they had on safety or wage theft or any kind of labor violation,” he said. “They just felt like it made them a target and they could easily be replaced.”

Many farmworkers who have been in the U.S. for decades travel north from Texas and Florida each year to work in Midwestern fields. But, with Trump in office, some in Florida decided to forgo the annual pilgrimage to avoid running into ICE, Xiuhtecutli said. Some took housekeeping or landscaping jobs to make ends meet. 

“I don’t think it was necessarily a positive change for them because it wasn’t steady work,” he said. “It was still seasonal.”

Once in office, Biden announced crackdowns on employers in the food supply chain that used migrant child labor, following a New York Times expose. Children worked in factories that processed or produced products for Walmart, Whole Foods and General Mills, the cereal giant.

In 2023, Biden also announced that workers who were in the country without documentation could be granted deferred action — i.e., not immediate deportation — if they witnessed or were victims of labor violations. The change would help hold “predatory” employers accountable, the administration said.

UFW’s De Loera-Brust said the deferred action rule was a “game changer” for unions. A couple dozen members of his union, which represents workers with a variety of legal statuses, have been granted stays under the new rule, he said.

“We’re actually able to tell workers not just that you will get better wages, better protections, better conditions through unionization,” he said. “We can actually also help protect you from deportation.”

Solis, the worker in Washington state, benefited from the new rule. In 2023, she was fired from her job on a mushroom farm. According to the state attorney general, the farm discriminated against female workers, including firing them, and was fined $3.4 million. Because of the incident, Solis was officially allowed to remain in the U.S. When she received the paperwork in the mail, she cried out of happiness all night, she said.

Another Biden rule, implemented this year, allowed H-2A farmworkers to invite union representatives into their employer-owned housing. It also banned employers from retaliating against workers trying to unionize. The state of New York allowed H-2A workers to unionize starting in 2020, which facilitated the unionization effort at Porpiglia Farms. The Biden rule codified the right for H-2A workers nationwide.

In late August, though, a judge temporarily blocked the rule, after 17 Republican-led states sued the Biden administration over it. The administration asked the judge to narrow the breadth of the injunction, which would allow some other farmworker protections to be enacted, according to Bloomberg Law. The request was denied.

Beyranevand, at the agriculture and food systems center, said the rule would be an important step for farmworkers. But the challenge would be enforcing it, and having workers believe they won’t face retaliation.

“I don’t know that a lot of farmworkers are going to invite in labor representatives or anyone that is putting their job in jeopardy if the farm owner is able to catch a whiff of that,” she said.

“I don’t know that a lot of farmworkers are going to invite in labor representatives or anyone that is putting their job in jeopardy if the farm owner is able to catch a whiff of that.”

Laurie Beyranevand,
director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School

Trump and his allies promise hard-line immigration policies

Deporting millions of farmworkers could have far-reaching consequences, experts and advocates said.

If the agricultural workforce were suddenly gone, the U.S. would likely have to rely much more heavily on imported food, said Dudley, of the Cornell farmworker program. That could lead to higher food prices, especially if another Trump proposal — replacing the income tax with tariffs on imports — is enacted. In turn, that could put more price pressure on individual consumers, particularly ones in food insecure families, Dudley said. (Some research suggests that more immigrants and H-2A workers in the food system leads to less inflation at the supermarket.)

Relying on imported food could become a national security issue. It could be easier for a foreign adversary to destabilize the U.S. if its food supply was prevented from reaching its shores. (The Biden administration said in a 2022 memo it was looking into how to bolster the security of the food system.)

Another consequence of mass deportation would be the gutting of the social safety net, Dudley said. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid almost $100 billion in taxes, and about a third went to Medicare and Social Security, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. 

“If you transition away from an undocumented labor force in agriculture, construction, restaurants, and other service sectors,” Dudley said, “there would be a significant financial loss to those systems, affecting all beneficiaries including the growing number of ‘baby boomers’ who are increasingly reliant on those programs for their financial well-being.”

The dairy industry relies heavily on undocumented labor, and it can’t use the H-2A program because milking cows is not a seasonal job. When asked to discuss the potential impact of a Trump presidency, the National Milk Producers Federation, which represents the dairy industry, said it had no one on staff “whose expertise aligns with the story you’re writing.” The Dairy Business Association, which represents Wisconsin dairies, said it is not commenting on the election.

Instead of undocumented labor, Trump signaled his support for the H-2A program, an increasingly popular program bereft with labor abuses. In a 2018 press release, Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture called the program a “source of legal and verified labor for agriculture.”

While in office, Trump made it easier for employers to hire H-2A workers, including eliminating some red tape. He also sought to change how visa workers were paid, which would have limited their earnings.

But close allies of Trump have proposed eliminating the program altogether. They’ve also recommended ending its sister program, the H-2B visa, which the meatpacking industry has latched onto. Both visa programs are intended to address seasonal labor shortages.

The influential conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, is behind the proposals, known as Project 2025. Trump has distanced himself from it, but The Washington Post reported he flew on a private jet with its leader in 2022, and CNN found at least 140 people who worked in Trump’s administration are involved in the project.

Actually eliminating the visa programs would likely be incredibly unpopular among farmers and industry lobbying groups, especially without a viable alternative, Beyranevand said.

The visa system “provides a really stable workforce for the agricultural sector,” she said. “Without the stability, I would imagine that farm businesses would be really opposed to something like that.”

The number of meatpacking plants that use H-2B visa workers has increased six-fold since 2015, according to federal labor department data. Little said her organization, the Meat Institute, would continue to ensure the H-2B visa was open to the meatpacking industry. Also, the industry supported reforming the H-2A program to “include meat and poultry processing and to recognize the year-round labor needs of the industry,” she said.

Tom Bressner, the executive director of the Wisconsin Agri-Business Association, said his organization wants to see the use of the H-2A program expanded, as well. It also supports streamlining the application process and removing some red tape.

“It’s a good program, but it really needs some major tweaking to make it work more effectively,” he said. “You talk about a nightmare to try to qualify for that program. You’ve got people out there wanting to work and we need them.”

The National Corn Growers Association, which represents an industry that hires H-2A labor regularly, said it did not comment on presidential elections. 

De Loera-Brust, with UFW, said he thinks Trump’s campaign rhetoric is not intended to translate into actual, on-the-ground policy. He made similar comments as a candidate in 2016 and as president, but deportations on the scale Trump promised did not occur.

“What I think the mass deportation slogan is really about is scaring workers,” De Loera-Brust said. “It’s about making immigrant workers feel like they cannot count on tomorrow, so they better keep their heads down and not say anything if they’re getting screwed out of their wages.”

Harris has voiced support for a path to citizenship 

In general, top Democrats have cracked down hard on illegal immigration while offering some relief. The Democratic president before Biden, Barack Obama, was often called the “deporter-in-chief” by his critics as he deported more undocumented immigrants than Trump. However, he also instituted the deferred action for childhood arrivals, or DACA, policy.

At the Democratic National Convention, Harris continued walking this line. In her speech accepting the Democratic Party nomination, she promised to sign bipartisan border security legislation into law.

“I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants — and reform our broken immigration system,” she said. “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship — and secure our border.”

As president, Biden has cracked down on illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. In early September, the New York Times reported he was considering making it tougher to enter the country without a visa by permanently blocking most asylum claims. This year, the numbers have dropped to their lowest point in years. (Because of the economic importance of immigration, some experts also worried about how Biden’s policies could impact the economy, Politico reported.)

Biden tasked Harris with addressing immigration. In 2021, she visited the Northern Triangle, the area of Central America where many recent immigrants originate. She spearheaded the Biden administration’s attempt to address poverty, violence and corruption in the area, the so-called “root causes” of immigration. When she visited Guatemala, Harris told those looking to journey to the U.S.: “Do not come.”

In his 2025 budget, Biden said he’d address immigration by hiring more than a thousand new border patrol agents and about 400 immigration judges to reduce the case backlog. In the Democratic Party platform, released for its convention, party leaders said it would “explore opportunities to identify or create work permits for immigrants, long-term undocumented residents, and legally processed asylum seekers in our country.”

Xiuhtecutli, with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said the Biden administration probably eased concerns for undocumented immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for decades, mostly because the population was not a near-constant target of powerful politicians.

“There was some relief, at least in the sense that it wasn’t being talked about as openly,” he said, “but, in the community, there’s still the perception that the border was still going to be a hot zone, that it was difficult to cross, still.”

Some farmworker advocates are hopeful for what a Harris administration could mean. When it endorsed Harris, UFW, the California-based farmworker union, said Harris was the “best leader to defeat Donald Trump and to continue the transformative work of the Biden-Harris administration.” Biden, it added, had been the “greatest friend” the union had.

Solis, who is a UFW member, said she hopes Harris continues the policies Biden implemented and possibly goes further. Trump’s rhetoric stigmatized her and her family, she said, particularly when he said he’d end the birthright citizenship of her sons. 

“I would tell him — with all due respect because he was president — he does not know how much he has hurt them with the way he expresses himself,” she said.

Mónica Cordero and Jennifer Bamberg contributed to this story.

This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Several right-wing billionaire megadonors, like the Uihleins, Diane Hendricks of ABC Supply and the co-founder of Kwik Trip, made big donations to the Republican incumbent.

By Maggie Zale, THE BADGER PROJECT

Tiffany (R-Hazelhurst) is far ahead of Democratic challenger Kyle Kilbourn in fundraising. The incumbent has $736,000 on hand, while Kilbourn has $24,000, according to their most recent campaign finance reports to the Federal Elections Commission.

See a list of Tiffany’s top donors in this election cycle below.

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Donations to candidates for federal offices from individuals are capped at $3,300 per election, so a person can give a candidate for Congress a max of $6,600 per election cycle, as it includes both a primary and a general. Political Action Committees that give to multiple candidates can donate up to $5,000 per election, for a total of $10,000 per election cycle.

When a candidate or committee receives contributions that exceed the legal maximum, they have 60 days to refund the overage, according to federal law. And campaigns and committees sometimes make errors on their campaign finance filings with the Federal Elections Commission, which can be amended.

Important note: the PACs of businesses cannot take money from their own coffers, per federal law. They must raise the money, which often comes from their executives and other employees.

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The top donors to Tiffany’s campaign in the 2024 election cycle (so far)

KLONDIKE CHEESE COMPANY, CHEESEMAKER	NOTES	AMOUNT
RONALD BUHOLZER MONROE, 53566	KLONDIKE CHEESE COMPANY, PRESIDENT	$13,200
GREG NICKLAUS ARBOR VITAE, 54568	INCREDIBLE BANK, VICE CHAIRMAN	$13,200
SCOTT MAYER FRANKLIN, 53132	QPS EMPLOYMENT GROUP, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD	$13,200
Automotive Free International Trade PAC		$10,000
WILLIAM HILGEMMAN STRATFORD, 54484	RETIRED	$9,900
National Beer Wholesalers Association PAC		$8,000
PATRICIA OLYNK PLOVER, 54467	MARK TOYOTA, VP	$6,600
GRANT E NELSON PRESCOTT, 54021	RETIRED	$6,600
GLENDA BUHOLZER MONROE, 53566	KLONDIKE CHEESE COMPANY, CHEESE MAKER	$6,600
DIANE HENDRICKS AFTON, 53501	HENDRICKS HOLDING COMPANY, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD	$6,600
House Freedom Fund PAC		$5,000
JOHN R ANDERSON ROCKFORD, 61107	SPRING CREEK PARTNERS, FOUNDER	$4,000
DAVID R CHARLES FRANKEN, 54229	CASH DEPOT, PRESIDENT	$3,500
RAMONA HILGEMMAN STRATFORD, 54484	RETIRED	$3,300
DARCEY NICKLAUS WOODRUFF, 54568	MARK TOYOTA, VP	$3,300
SUSAN BUHOLZER MONROE, 53566	RETIRED	$3,300
MARC GOLDMAN BOCA RATON, 33432	RETIRED	$3,300
RUTH SCHUETTE WAUSAU, 54401	RETIRED	$3,300
SUSANNE MAYER FRANKLIN, 53132	HOMEMAKER	$3,300
NANCY MASTERSON NAPLES, 34102	RETIRED	$3,300
OBERT B REINGOLD MONTECITO, 93108	ROBERT B REINGOLD INC, PRESIDENT	$3,300
JOE MASTERSON NAPLES, 34102	RETIRED	$3,300
JOANNE R ORR VILLAGE OF GOLF, 33436	RETIRED	$3,300
THOMAS C GARDNER PITTSVILLE, 54466	FARMER	$3,300
RICHARD H PFISTER HAYWARD, 54843	RETIRED	$3,300
JAY SCHUETTE SUGAR GROVE, 60554	WAUSAU HOMES, CEO	$2,800
JORGE WOLDENBERG BAL HARBOUR, 33154	CORPAC GROUP, CEO	$2,500
JEANNE MARK BASEHOLDER, 66007	ATTORNEY	$2,500
KEITH MARK BASEHOLDER, 66007	ATTORNEY	$2,500
MARLENE JANAY HIGHLAND BEACH, 33487	GAD AND MARLENE JANAY FOUNDATION, BOARD MEMBER	$2,000
LAMMOT COPELAND JR. WILMINGTON, 19801	ASSOCIATES INTERNATIONAL, CEO	$2,000
JEFFREY R LAVERS HUDSON, 54016	ETC GIFT SHOP, OWNER	$2,000
BERNARD KOETHER DEERFIELD BEACH, 33441	RETIRED	$2,000
CHAD L SHUMWAY MAPLETON, 84664	4C HOME HEALTH, VICE PRESIDENT	$2,000
RICHARD W WOLDING NELSONVILLE, 54458	RETIRED	$2,000
RICHARD M CONNOR JR. LAONA, 54541	PINE RIVERSIDE CO, PRESIDENT	$1,500
WILLIAM B HOPPER SCOTTSDALE, 85262	RETIRED	$1,500
CAROL G TAYLOR WAUKESHA, 53186	RETIRED	$1,500
MARK D EMMERSON REDDING, 96049	SIERRA PACIFIC INDUSTRIES, CFO	$1,500
MARSHA PITLIK EAGLE RIVER, 54521	PITLIK + WICK INC, OWNER	$1,500
TZIPORA COHEN ENGLEWOOD, 07631	MARKETING	$1,112
JAMES L JEMERLING WAUSAU, 54403	RETIRED	$1,000
JAMES G VAN WYCHEN WARREN, 54666	WETNERBY CRANBERRY CO, CRANBERRY GROWER	$1,000
TIM REILAND, SCOTTSDALE, 85258	RETIRED	$1,000
DAVID MATHENY LEANDER, 78641	HILL COUNTY CLASS 3 LLC, HEAD OF HR	$1,000
DAVID J BARTLING MANITOWISH WATERS, 54545	BARTLING’S MANITOWISH CRANBERRY CO, OWNER	$1,000

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The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

The post Top Donors to Rep. Tom Tiffany in the 2024 election cycle (so far) appeared first on The Badger Project.

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Top Donors to Rep. Tom Tiffany in the 2024 election cycle (so far) was first posted on September 16, 2024 at 12:57 pm.

The post Temas buscados según Google por votantes appeared first on MIWISCONSIN: Conectando los latinos en español | News in spanish.

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• The new owner of a large St. Croix County dairy farm with a history of manure spills is seeking to build trust among watchful residents who worry about deteriorating water quality.

• The new owner, Breeze Dairy Group, or its contractors have spilled thousands of gallons of manure over the past decade at its other farms, but says spills are bound to happen and that they are quickly reported and cleaned up. 

• Wisconsin residents increasingly are informing state regulators of manure spills, although experts doubt their frequency truly is rising.

• One expert says state data overrepresents spills on large farms, which typically are minor compared to those reported by small farms.

Gregg Wolf vows “to put a new step forward” on “a new day” at a northwest Wisconsin dairy.

Appleton-based Breeze Dairy Group, where he serves as CEO, purchased Emerald Sky Dairy in March, shortly after the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources approved the St. Croix County farm’s expansion.

Along with 2,400 spotted cows, four odiferous freestall barns and a milking parlor, the company acquired an undesired aspect of the $11 million property: the dairy’s checkered reputation.

During its eight years under previous ownership, the farm — since rechristened Croix Breeze Dairy — racked up a litany of manure violations, including two major spills. One went unreported for months until an anonymous tipster notified authorities.

The incidents drew rebukes from county officials and residents, who complained that the state’s lax penalties would not deter future offenses.

Residents fear that the farm’s growth will only increase contamination of St. Croix County’s water, some of which already contains nutrients commonly found in crop fertilizer and manure that can make people sick.

Now, after growling excavators and dozers regraded parts of the property, Wolf has worked to improve the dairy’s image, with a farm face-lift and managerial improvements. Trash was removed. The lawn seeded and green. Even the cows, a special crossbreed with hides covered in patches of black, white and almond fur, will be replaced.

“We’re more of an open book. We don’t really have anything to hide,” he said in June over the hum of the milking parlor. “I think the former owners didn’t communicate the best, and I would say farmers, in general, we’re terrible at PR.”

Convincing locals that the recently expanded dairy can be a good neighbor will be a hard sell.

“One would like to hope that a change in management would bring better management than what we’ve had,” said Kim Dupre, a former Emerald resident, who moved to Minnesota after Emerald Sky’s first manure spill. “But I guess the proof will be in the pudding.”

Breeze has committed to safety and distanced itself from its predecessor, but residents — already skeptical of large farms and the state agencies that regulate them — also are scrutinizing the company’s record.

In April, Breeze had an inauspicious introduction when a broken roadside signpost pierced a contractor’s manure application hose, releasing 500 gallons into a ditch before workers contained the small spill. 

And across roughly a decade, Breeze or its contractors spilled an estimated 147,000 to 202,000 gallons of manure in 11 other reported incidents, state records show. 

“When you’re moving millions of gallons of manure, unfortunately, equipment breaks, people make bad decisions,” Wolf said. “We report ourselves as you’re supposed to legally do and work with the DNR and clean up anything that might have happened.”

Breeze errs on the side of “overkill” when it comes to reporting, Wolf said; reporting, cleaning up, learning from spills — it’s part of company culture.

Residents will be checking. 

Croix Breeze Dairy sits on the corner of 250th Street and County Road G — a main drag for drivers, especially during the summer county fair season. It’s surrounded by dozens of households.

“He’s gonna have a lot of eyes on him,” Dupre said.

Wisconsin residents increasingly are informing state regulators of manure spills. Although researchers and authorities doubt their frequency truly is rising, communities like Emerald ask how many spills the state expects them to tolerate before authorities prevent problems from developing.

“That’s a word we don’t like to hear in relation to a CAFO,” said resident Barbara Nelson, who lives less than a mile from Croix Breeze. “Even if it isn’t a major spill, it’s still a spill.”

St. Croix County sees changes in farming and water quality

Five families formed Breeze Dairy Group in 2002, and the company has steadily grown. Before the Emerald Sky acquisition, it owned four large livestock farms — known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

Breeze has a pending request with the state to enlarge another of its operations, which, if approved, could expand the company’s authorized capacity to more than 20,000 cows across five farms.

Wolf, a La Crosse County native who grew up on a 50-cow dairy, joined Breeze four years ago. He said herd sizes depend on the milk market and demand, and the company lacks a definitive target. It lacks a financial incentive to fill a dairy to maximum capacity if milk processors don’t pay enough to make a return on investment.

Although Croix Breeze’s new permit grants the farm authority to grow to 3,300 cows, Wolf said the company has no plans to exceed the current count. But broadly speaking, he said, farms need to expand as operational costs rise faster than milk prices.

In fact, said the dairy’s former owner, Todd Tuls of Rising City, Nebraska, the inability to expand Emerald Sky to his intended size of 5,000 to 6,000 cows was one reason he sold the operation.

St. Croix County is experiencing a familiar story of farm consolidation and growth.

Its 93,000 residents see less pasture, which dropped by half in just five years, and more soybean and wheat fields.

Mid-sized dairies also are disappearing, while larger operations have expanded their herds. Cows produce more milk and manure in increasingly centralized locations. Applicators spread the dung on farmland.  

Doing so improves soil, incorporating nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium — nutrients plants use to grow. But fertilizing the ground in excess or subpar weather can contaminate water with pathogenic bacteria and viruses and nitrates, the latter of which, when consumed above the national health standard, increases the risk of birth defects, thyroid disease and colon cancer.

Alongside farming changes in St. Croix County, water contamination worsened in recent decades.The county’s share of private wells with unsafe nitrate concentrations rose from 10% to 13% between 2010 and 2022.

County conservation staff attribute the elevated levels to row cropping, exacerbated by the region’s porous bedrock, whose cracks and fissures enable water to rapidly enter the aquifer.

Many in the community also view Emerald Sky’s expansion as the harbinger of additional manure spills at a farm that has seen many in its history.

Environmental group alarmed over spills

In the winter of 2016, up to 275,000 gallons of liquid manure flowed through a cracked pipe into wetlands on the Emerald Sky property. Certain locations amassed deposits three feet deep.

Tuls told local media, and still maintains, that heavy snow obscured the spill from dairy staff, delaying detection, although prosecutors disputed his claim.

“Four feet of snow on it and people are like, ‘How do you not know?’” he said in an interview. “You don’t know because you can’t see it.”

In a 2019 incident that attracted attention, the dairy’s liquid manure was applied to a sloped field before it rained, allowing some to flow into a nearby creek, killing fish.

Tuls said the day’s weather was unexpected and the Department of Natural Resources could not prove the fish kill resulted from runoff linked to his field.

“We didn’t go to war with the DNR on that one ’cause it’s just like in our mind we handled everything that needed to be done,” he said. “I don’t know of a single perfect person in the world. People want cheese on their pizza and they want ice cream at Dairy Queen and they want milk in the fridge when they go get their cereal and they want half-and-half with their coffee and they don’t understand how hard it is to actually produce that milk.”

The Department of Natural Resources referred each case to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, and Attorney General Josh Kaul levied a total of $145,000 in fines.

Under the weariness of past experience, Dupre, co-founder of St. Croix County Defending Our Water, and other environmental advocates swiveled their spotlight onto Breeze Dairy Group’s spills.

From 2013 to 2017, equipment failures at the company’s Waushara County farm released a total of 95,000 to 135,000 gallons of manure into an adjacent wetland and a neighbor’s pond on three occasions.

The Department of Natural Resources required a cleanup but determined the spills did little environmental damage.

Meanwhile, a 50,000-gallon spill at Lake Breeze Dairy in 2014 killed most fish in a creek that flows into Fond du Lac County’s Lake Winnebago. However, the local health department concluded the discharge didn’t contaminate groundwater.

The following winter, a broken line released up to 2,000 gallons of manure into a ditch before the farm contained the spill and pumped it back into a lagoon.

Manure hauling mishaps caused some of Breeze’s spills over the years. In five documented incidents between 2014 and 2023, haulers released about 15,000 gallons due to equipment failure or trucker error. On one occasion, faulty wiring caused a manure release valve to open when a driver activated a turn signal.

Spills are not inevitable, Wolf said, “but the risk is always there.” Yet as technology advances at dairies, he believes risk has fallen.

Croix Breeze Dairy doesn’t truck its manure but pumps it through hoses, which automatically shut off when pressure drops. To reduce field runoff, workers blend manure into the soil using a disc-like tractor attachment.

“It’s just a matter of putting procedures and training in place,” Wolf said, “setting up systems that just don’t fail or have lower risk of failing.”

How common are spills?

Wisconsin researchers are among a select few to document manure spill trends.

In 15 years, reported incidents statewide jumped from about 40 to roughly 200 annually, but Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension staff don’t believe their frequency actually increased.

Instead, they contend people, most often manure haulers and farmers, increasingly notified authorities. 

That makes sense to Kevin Erb, a UW-Extension training director, who helped plan the state’s first live-action manure spill demonstrations for farmers, applicators and haulers.

Wisconsin’s regulations require all farms, regardless of size, to relay news of spills that threaten health, safety or the environment. But large livestock farm operators must report any incident. Erb said state data overrepresents CAFO-involved spills, which typically are minor compared to those reported by small farms.

“Mechanical failures are gonna happen,” Erb said. “The true measure in my mind is when an accident happens, was it dealt with properly, was it cleaned up and was it reported?”

Over time, the percentage of reported spills that occurred during manure transport increased, and they more frequently involved CAFOs than small operations. Now spills tend to occur in equal measure during hauling and on the farm, such as when a manure lagoon overflows.

Erb attributes the rise in transport spills to the increasing concentration of ever-larger volumes of manure, which haulers must truck to fields. Some are several miles from CAFO buildings, increasing road time and risk.

The volume of most reported spills ranged between 50 and 1,000 gallons. Nearly half of incidents affected surface waters or roadside ditches that were filled with standing water.

To permit or not to permit?

The Department of Natural Resources tries to use a soft touch when compelling CAFO operators to follow state manure regulations. Still, like the case of Emerald Sky, the law leaves room for escalation, up to referring a case to the Department of Justice for possible citation or even criminal prosecution.

“There’s a million different factors at play,” said Ben Uvaas, a department employee who specializes in farm runoff rules.

Variables like a spill’s preventability, the operator’s mitigation efforts and impacts to health and the environment all shape the agency’s response.

But how do spills impact permitting?

The department is “definitely allowed” to consider a farm’s compliance history, including spills, said Jeff Jackson, who works in the state’s CAFO program and drafted Emerald Sky’s wastewater permit.

Large livestock farms must resolve violations before the state can reissue their permits. If they don’t, staff can hold off or impose new requirements like groundwater monitoring.

More than 60 attendees opposed the reissuance of Emerald Sky’s permit at a 2023 public hearing. Dupre presented a petition with 145 signatures, calling for operating requirements like cover crops and an animal cap due to the farm’s “less-than-stellar track record.” 

“I appreciate that producers need a level of certainty in their business,” she said in an interview, “but homeowners need the same level of certainty in the investment we make in our properties.”

But Wisconsin’s wastewater permitting process isn’t designed to litigate past misdeeds, punish farmers or put chronic offenders out of business. Instead, the regulatory system sets conditions under which entities like sewer treatment plants and CAFOs can safely pollute.

In the normal course of business, large livestock farm operators request agency approval for a wastewater discharge permit. The department outlines restrictions, along with self-monitoring and reporting requirements.

The agency generally can’t deny a permit if an operator agrees to abide by stipulations, said Paul LaLiberte, a former department employee who worked in water programs for 35 years. 

Additionally, regulators can’t deny permits based on potential environmental damage to a region, according to the agency, nor preexisting ecological issues.

The department doesn’t claim that large livestock farms present “zero risk” or that their required nutrient management plans — which outline the location, timing and quantity of nutrients operators will apply to farmland — guarantee no impacts to water quality. 

This might explain why residents sometimes perceive a contradiction between seemingly preordained permit approvals and the agency’s stated mission to “protect and enhance” ​​natural resources. 

Wisconsin law broadly limits the department’s authority to deny permits. 

In practice, department officials don’t deny permits or expansions to get farmers to follow the law, LaLiberte said.

“They have to go through the courts and pummel them into compliance.”

Ideally, a violator determines that cooperating costs less than accumulating fines.

“Of course, the day after they get the reissued permit, they could go back to their old habits,” LaLiberte said. “DNR doesn’t have the ability like a judge would for chronic violations to take away somebody’s driver’s license.”

Running on good faith

The Department of Natural Resources reissued Emerald Sky’s permit, stating the dairy resolved its infractions. Staff said they had no justification to deny the expansion because the farm has enough storage for manure and cropland on which to apply it.

The agency’s limited authority means protecting water increasingly depends on farmers’ “good faith,” said Hudson resident Celeste Koeberl, whose home of 31 years adjoins Lake Mallalieu in western St. Croix County. 

Algae blooms cover the water’s surface each summer, fueled by phosphorus runoff, traced to area agriculture.

The dairy’s expansion is “just one more thing that’s gonna make our lake gross,” she said. “These are public waters.”

Wolf said Breeze Dairy Group will earn the community’s trust. He works with a local grower and intends to plant cover crops, which help reduce soil runoff.

Tim Stieber, St. Croix County’s conservation administrator, is extending the company the benefit of the doubt. 

He, Jackson and another county staff member recently visited the property and were encouraged to learn of several more upgrades Breeze made, including an incinerator to dispose of deceased livestock and a web-based manure monitoring system.

“A new owner,” Stieber said, “it’s actually an opportunity.”

This story is part of a partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

How many manure spills is too many? St. Croix County residents scrutinize big farm’s new owner 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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Voters using Wisconsin’s newly legalized drop boxes may return only their own ballots, except in special cases, according to new guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. That means even a voter dropping off a spouse’s ballot along with their own would be considered as having cast a ballot improperly.

The rule could be difficult for municipal clerks to enforce. But it leaves an opening for potential challenges from conservative election activists, who are already preparing to act on suspicions that Democratic voters will abuse the boxes to commit fraud. Allegations of drop box misuse could also spur legal challenges to election results, experts say. 

In the run-up to this year’s elections, local officials are dealing with heavy scrutiny from election observers seeking to challenge absentee ballots, and Republicans have sought to increase the number of people monitoring drop boxes. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde recently called for 24-hour drop box monitoring in Madison, The Washington Post reported.

Those calls came quickly after a Wisconsin Supreme Court majority on July 5 overturned a 2022 decision that banned drop boxes. Since the decision, clerks in cities like Madison, Milwaukee and other municipalities around the state have stated their intent to use drop boxes in the August primary.

Drop boxes became one of the most politicized election issues in Wisconsin after the 2020 presidential contest, leading to extensive misinformation, false allegations of widespread fraud, and “2,000 Mules,” a purported documentary about drop box misuse that has been roundly debunked. Their return in Wisconsin promises to revive the suspicions that fed those claims.

“People who don’t believe that the system has integrity are looking for places to prove that, and the drop box just becomes an easy place to go because it’s in public, and there are lots of voters interacting with those boxes as they deposit ballots,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, the founding director of the university’s Elections Research Center. “And so it’s a place where their suspicions can be tested.”

Already, on social media channels prominently featuring election conspiracy theorists, people are making plans to monitor drop boxes.

One person in a Telegram group called for people to “Sit by those boxes like flies on shit.” 

Another suggested what could be more menacing behavior, calling for drop box observers to follow voters home, “Make a note of their address then post it on Telegram.”

Even a perceived misuse of a drop box could be used to fuel concerns about election integrity, UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said. 

“It may mean that you have more observers that are going to camp out at drop boxes looking for something that they think is wrong, whether or not it is, and having a viral moment,” he said. “There often may well be innocent explanations, but nevertheless, the appearance will be something questionable enough for them to run with.”

The last time drop boxes were in use, there wasn’t a rule or guidance explicitly addressing whether voters had to return only their own ballots to drop boxes. When the Wisconsin Supreme Court banned them in 2022 following a challenge from conservatives, it said voters with absentee ballots had to mail them or deliver them in person to the clerk, but didn’t rule on whether a voter could mail other people’s ballots.

When the state Supreme Court, now with a liberal majority, overturned the drop box ban on July 5, it didn’t address whether people could return ballots besides their own to a drop box. But the election commission stepped in with its guidance, saying voters can return only their own ballots unless they’re helping somebody who’s disabled or hospitalized. 

Additionally, the guidance clarifies the court decision doesn’t require drop boxes to be staffed or require clerks to “ask any questions” of a voter returning a ballot to a drop box. 

People can watch drop boxes, as long as they don’t interfere with voting, the guidance says, and clerks should contact law enforcement if people impede the use of a drop box.

‘Vigilantes’ could get involved in monitoring drop boxes

Besides Wisconsin, 27 states explicitly allow drop boxes, while another six states have jurisdictions that use them.

States differ in their rules on who can return voters’ absentee ballots to a drop box or a clerk. In Georgia, which has drop boxes, voters’ absentee ballots can be returned by their family members, household members or caregivers. In Alabama, though, voters can return only their own ballots.

In Wisconsin, Burden said, the new WEC guidance draws “a brighter line” than the courts did on the issue of who can return a ballot. “So it might give some justification for these kinds of vigilantes who want to watch the drop boxes and look for wrongdoing.”

Burden cautioned, though, that there could be ambiguous situations where these people might incorrectly “jump to conclusions.”

For example, a voter could be putting three ballots into a drop box, two of them completed by  the voter’s disabled parents, which would be allowed, he said. But if an election observer captured that on video, such a moment could be misinterpreted, or deliberately misused, to spread suspicions of improper voting.

“It gets very easy for a misunderstanding to spin out of control,” Burden said, “and so it would be much better for election officials or courts — people who actually know what they’re doing — to be on top of this, rather than allow rogue individuals to inject themselves into the process.”

Burden warned that such vigilante behavior could escalate to a form of voter intimidation, as in Arizona in 2022, where a group of people wearing masks and carrying guns stood close to drop boxes until a judge ordered them to stand farther away.

Challenges to drop boxes could take many forms  

In Shorewood Hills, a 2,100-person village surrounded by Madison, village Clerk Julie Fitzgerald unlocked the village drop box the day the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that they were legal. 

Fitzgerald said having drop boxes available again for ballots is especially convenient because the village box is also used by residents to drop off their utility payments. When drop boxes were banned for voting purposes, Fitzgerald had to close them off during elections, requiring residents to return utility payments elsewhere.

Neither the court’s ruling nor the election commission’s guidance requires drop boxes to be staffed. Before the commission issued its guidance, Fitzgerald said she hoped it wouldn’t put the onus on clerks to monitor drop boxes. 

But clerks can still come under scrutiny if a voter returns multiple ballots. And they would face pressure to do something about it to preserve the integrity of the vote count.

“As a statutory matter, the rules concerning return of absentee ballots are mandatory. Improperly cast absentee votes are not to be counted,” said Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which filed the lawsuit that led to the 2022 drop box ban.

There are a few different ways to handle a situation like that, Esenberg said. 

One option is a drawdown: That’s when election officials withdraw randomly selected ballots because of a numerical discrepancy and exclude them from the count. State law outlines a drawdown as a possible remedy when, during canvassing, the number of tabulated ballots is greater than the number of recorded voters. The idea is that if they can’t determine exactly which ballots should be invalidated, they might at least be able to determine the quantity of those ballots and randomly select that quantity to exclude from the count.

State law and the election commission’s manual don’t stipulate doing a drawdown for improperly returned absentee ballots, but plaintiffs could request such a remedy in a lawsuit. 

Other remedies can be considered, Esenberg added, pointing to a North Carolina case where the state ordered a new election after the Republican candidate’s campaign was accused of ballot tampering.

Post-election challenges have limitations, however, Esenberg said. 

After the 2020 election, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a challenge by then-President Donald Trump that called for drawing down 220,000 votes from Dane and Milwaukee counties. The ruling said it was “unreasonable” for Trump to challenge the ballots after the election on the basis of laws and procedures that were in place well before the election.

Referring in part to that case, Yablon said, “Courts in Wisconsin and elsewhere do tend to hesitate before throwing out the votes of eligible voters.”

If the returned ballots are otherwise proper, he said, “the courts are going to be very reluctant to disenfranchise someone based on a deficiency in just how it was returned.”

Challenges to current drop box rules could also come from the other direction, in favor of expanding return options, Yablon said.

Groups that want to loosen the current guidance could ask the commission or a court for permission for them to collect and return multiple ballots, arguing that the Supreme Court’s latest ruling represents a broader preference for expanding return options, he said.

Safeguards against fraud are in place for ballots left in drop boxes

It’s possible under the current rules that an otherwise legitimate ballot can be returned improperly, leaving clerks or challengers to find a way to resolve that issue.

But election officials have safeguards in place to protect against the possibility of widespread fraud through drop boxes, like somebody filling out and returning multiple ballots to a drop box under fake names or in the name of somebody who has already voted.

Wisconsin clerks process absentee ballots from drop boxes just as they do any other absentee vote, including those sent through the mail or dropped off in person. With narrow exceptions for military voters, election officials send absentee ballots only to Wisconsin residents who have requested one and are confirmed to have registered to vote with a valid ID.

Before opening the ballot envelopes deposited in a drop box, election officials verify they have witness and voter signatures and a witness address. Then they open the envelope, verify that the person casting the ballot was qualified to vote and hadn’t already voted in the election, and record the person on the poll books as having returned an absentee ballot. Only then would they tabulate the vote.

In its guidance, the commission also issued best security practices for drop boxes, including making sure that drop boxes are in a well-lit area, that they have locks or seals to secure ballots and that they can’t be moved or tampered with.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin’s new rules on ballot drop boxes create opportunity for election challenges, ‘vigilantes’ 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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Click here to read highlights from the story

• Officials in Green Bay say Donald Trump’s campaign has refused to reimburse the city for more than $42,700 in public safety and operations costs from rallies in 2024 and 2016. 
• President Biden has not visited Green Bay this year, but the campaign has reimbursed the city for $7,000 in costs related to first lady Jill Biden’s visit.
• Green Bay says the campaigns of two Democrats still owe the city for costs stemming from events in 2016: Hillary Clinton (about $12,500) and Bernie Sanders (nearly $2,000).
• Officials in Eau Claire, which hosted Trump and Clinton in 2016, say the city is still owed nearly $47,000 and $7,000 from each visit respectively, but they are next expecting to be paid. 
• Madison, the site of a rally for President Biden on July 5, follows a long-standing practice of not billing campaigns for visits. It does not plan to invoice Biden’s campaign.

Editor’s note: This story was reported and written before the July 13 shooting at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, which is being investigated as an assassination attempt.

With President Joe Biden and Donald Trump again eying Wisconsin as a crucial presidential election battleground, some cash-strapped municipalities hope their campaigns will pick up the tab for their expensive visits to the state.

Those include the cities of Green Bay and Eau Claire, where officials said they still haven’t been reimbursed for tens of thousands of dollars in costs related to public safety and operational support during campaign visits dating back to 2016. 

On a snowy Tuesday evening in April, Trump made his first visit in four years to Green Bay, delivering a roughly one-hour speech to hundreds of supporters gathered downtown at the KI Convention Center.

The city’s costs for the rally totaled nearly $33,400, officials said in a July 2 press release. The costs stemmed from operational, security and traffic coordination services — the biggest chunk coming in police overtime —  and preparing for the risks of welcoming a high-profile candidate, said Diana Ellenbecker, the city’s finance director. 

Trump’s arrival at 5 p.m. on a workday “created much more overtime and much more coordination for the bigger crowd,” Ellenbecker said. “There’s just hours and hours and hours involved administratively, besides all the operational needs, to make it a safe event.”

Trump campaign not willing to pay bills

The April rally was the most expensive presidential campaign event Green Bay has hosted without being reimbursed since 2016. Trump’s campaign has refused to reimburse the city for those costs or for nearly $9,400 in police expenses related to an August 2016 rally, city records show. 

“When we reached out to the Trump camp, they sent an email that they’re not responsible for paying this bill,” Ellenbecker said. 

Without reimbursement, the extra rally costs eat into the department reserve funds. 

“It does have an impact,” Ellenbecker said. “It makes departments look like they’re overspending their budgets because they’re incurring expenses that they didn’t have a revenue source for.” 

President Biden has not visited Green Bay this year, but first lady Jill Biden visited the Brown County Public Library in June to promote the president’s health care policies, prompting the city to invoice the Democrat’s campaign nearly $7,000 for police, fire, parking and related costs for an event that was smaller and easier to support than Trump’s rally. The city received a payment from Biden’s campaign days after its July press release listed the invoice as unpaid, and Ellenbecker called the campaign “proactive” in handling it. 

“We pay our bills, and Trump doesn’t,” Eliana Locke, regional spokesperson for the Biden campaign, told Wisconsin Watch. “He’s continued to stiff working people, and that includes places like Green Bay.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment, but it has previously denied responsibility for such costs. 

“It is the U.S. Secret Service, not the campaign, which coordinates with local law enforcement,” the Trump campaign told The Center for Public Integrity in April 2020, responding to the news outlet’s findings that the campaign refused to pay invoices from 14 local governments totaling $1.82 million. “The campaign itself does not contract with local governments for police involvement. All billing inquiries should go to the Secret Service.” 

At the Trump campaign’s suggestion, Green Bay shared its April invoice with the Secret Service, Ellenbecker said, only to be told “that’s not our responsibility to pay this bill.”

Green Bay officials said the campaigns of two Democrats still owe the city for costs stemming from events in 2016: Hillary Clinton (about $12,500) and Bernie Sanders (nearly $2,000). 

“Green Bay residents are frugal people who pay their bills, and they expect presidential candidates to do the same,” Mayor Eric Genrich said in the city’s press release. “It is a matter of fairness and fiscal responsibility — our residents should not bear the burden of these expenses.”

Oshkosh city manager: ‘Campaigns ignore municipalities’  

Green Bay isn’t the only city feeling stiffed by past presidential campaigns.   

Officials in Eau Claire, which hosted Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, said the city is still owed nearly $47,000 and $7,000 from each visit respectively. 

“We have not been paid, and we do not expect to be paid, and there’s no recourse for us to be paid from them,” Regi Akan, who works in the office of City Manager Stephanie Hirsch, told Wisconsin Watch. 

The city of Oshkosh incurred costs related to a 2020 Trump rally and a campaign visit from Chelsea Clinton in 2016, but the city hasn’t aggressively sought reimbursement due to historic challenges in doing so, said City Manager Mark Rohloff in an interview.

Rohloff, who worked decades ago in California local government, said the problem isn’t new. He recalls trying to bill former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign to no avail.   

“Campaigns ignore municipalities, thinking that they should be happy that a presidential candidate chooses to come and visit their town,” Rohloff said. “Unless the campaigns are going to publicly commit and be held accountable for paying or not paying their bills, it’s going to be very difficult.”

Trump’s campaign did reimburse at least one Wisconsin city for a campaign stop. In a document acquired by Business Insider in 2020, Trump’s campaign treasurer at the time approved a $5,574 payment to the city of La Crosse for costs related to a September 2020 rally. The payment arrived several weeks late, and it was also 10 cents short of the invoice’s requested amount, Business Insider reported. The Trump campaign at the time, however, had not paid the city for a 2016 event. 

Past proposal would allow upfront invoicing 

Responding to complaints about unpaid invoices, Democrats in the Legislature have previously proposed legislation to allow local governments to require advance payments from visiting presidential or vice presidential candidates.

The “Recovery of Unsettled Municipal Payments Act” failed to advance after being introduced in the 2019-2020 and 2023-2024 legislative sessions.

“Before President Trump or any of the other presidential campaigns come to Wisconsin, they should pay their bills if they expect to hold events for voters,” said the bill’s most recent co-sponsorship memo, authored by Sens. Jeff Smith of Brunswick and Chris Larson of Milwaukee, along with Reps. Kristina Shelton of Green Bay and Jodi Emerson of Eau Claire.

Such legislation is a “nice gesture,” Rohloff said, but enforcement would prove difficult because municipalities can’t reasonably deny services aimed at protecting the public.

“We have to assist our federal and state law enforcement partners to ensure public safety,” Rohloff said.  “So we’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place because we’re not going to say no, and (campaigns) know it.” 

Shouldering extra costs of campaign visits is necessary, regardless of whether campaigns chip in, said Dylan Brogan, spokesperson for the city of Madison. Madison, the site of a rally for President Biden on July 5, follows a long-standing practice of not billing campaigns for visits, regardless of party.  It does not plan to invoice Biden’s campaign. 

The only exception to this practice, Brogan said, was a 2019 visit from Sanders during his presidential campaign run. His campaign “specifically asked the city for an invoice so he could pay them back, and his campaign did,” Brogan said.

But gestures like Sanders’ are rare, Brogan said.

“There’s only so much the city can do except to be welcoming and making sure that everyone is safe.”

Wisconsin cities want presidential candidates to pay for pricey campaign stops 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.