Today’s Key Reads include tidbits from the worlds of economics, politics and crime.
We begin in Northeast Wisconsin, where the news surrounding a missing three-year-old boy appears to be getting worse by the day. Regardless of how this case turns out, it is clear that the adults in his life not only failed him, but hurt him. From revelations that his mom left him with a male friend to administer punishment, to news that the mother may have been victim of human trafficking years ago, although charges in the case were dropped.
Missing 3-year-old: Caregiver faced charges relating to human trafficking in 2016 | WISN
According to court documents, Elijah’s mother, Katrina Baur, told investigators she sent her son to stay with Vang starting Feb. 12 as “punishment,” saying she wanted Vang to teach the 3-year-old “how to be a man.”
WISN 12 News obtained court documents from 2016 that detail a troubling history between Baur, Vang and Jimmy Vue, who family identified as Elijah’s biological father.
Investigators in Outagamie County say in November 2015, police responded to a hotel in Appleton, where Baur had hidden in a bathroom and attracted the attention of hotel staff, who called police. Baur told police she had been sexually assaulted “by two Asian males while at the AmericInn.”
…Investigators identified one of the men as Jesse Vang. According to a search warrant, Baur told investigators the men told her she was their property, and detailed how she “would be transported to a house near Minneapolis that was not nice where she would perform sex acts for drugs and compensation.z”
Vue has been in prison since before Elijah disappeared, serving time for multiple charges, including child abuse.
Prosecutors charged Vang in the hotel incident with conspiracy to commit human trafficking and second-degree sexual assault. The state eventually dropped the charges.
A new report sheds light on how a tight and turbulent economy has impacted housing in Wisconsin, for both homeowners and renters.
Wisconsin home prices have climbed faster than income in recent years, report says | WPR
Home prices in Wisconsin have grown faster than incomes in recent years, creating challenges for prospective first-time homebuyers.
That’s according to a new report released Wednesday by the Wisconsin Policy Forum. The report examined the change in incomes, home and rent prices from 2017 to 2022.
It found that the cost of owner-occupied housing in the state has far outpaced income growth, while median incomes among renters have kept pace with rising rental prices. However, the share of renters spending more on housing than what’s generally deemed “affordable” has also increased…
From 2017 to 2022, the median home sale price in Wisconsin increased by more than 50 percent, while median household incomes in the state increased by only 19.7 percent, the report states…
While the cost of owner occupied housing has been dramatic, the report indicates changes in the state’s rental market were less pronounced.
It found median gross monthly rents increased by 21.1 percent from 2017 to 2022, while median household incomes among renters rose by 22 percent.
Over the same period, however, the share of the state’s renters spending at least 30 percent of their income on housing rose from 43.6 percent in 2017 to 45.4 percent in 2022, according to the report. And in Milwaukee and Dane counties, more than half of renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing in 2022.
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos isn’t mincing words when it comes to what he thinks about the activists and agitators trying to recall him by forcing an election just a few weeks before the regularly-scheduled August Primary election.
‘Whack jobs’ and ‘morons’: Robin Vos rails at organizers of recall effort | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says his campaign has identified “a huge number” of potential forgeries among the signatures gathered by organizers of a recall effort against him — a group of detractors he described Tuesday as “whack jobs” and “morons.”
Vos said Tuesday his campaign in recent days hired a private investigator and assembled dozens of volunteers to comb through the hundreds of pages of petition documents submitted by a group of Donald Trump supporters seeking to recall Vos over his unwillingness to grant the former president’s requests to undo Wisconsin’s 2020 election.
The campaign has found forged signatures and felons working for the recall campaign, Vos said.
“In Wisconsin, if you’re a felon, you’re not allowed to circulate. Well, they brought in people from out of state who are felons!” Vos told reporters following an event in Madison hosted by Wispolitics.com.
Recall organizers earlier this month submitted to the Wisconsin Elections Commission more than 10,000 signatures — nearly 4,000 more than required. But last week, elections commission staff determined the recall organizers did not obtain enough signatures from residents in the district Vos was elected in when the recall began, falling about 945 signatures short.
Now that the Spring equinox has passed, parts of Wisconsin can gear up to end the week with another round of snow for much of the state.
Early spring snow to bring a slick end to the work week | WEAU
Unseasonable warmth has dominated the month of March with winter all but in the rear view mirror, but a pattern shift is ironically going to revive winter this week, as we enter the early days of spring. The weather will remain quiet through Thursday, but snow is forecast to push through Minnesota and into Wisconsin by Thursday night. This will come out ahead of a quick moving low pressure system that will slide well to our southwest. At this time it appears snow would develop by midnight Thursday, continuing into a part of Friday morning before exiting. The snow will be light to moderate intensity, but a band or two of heavier snow may occur.
Like a whack job clings to a conspiracy theory, Winter just doesn’t want to let go.
