News of suspended Brewer Ryan Braun’s apology dominated much of the local news this week.
But other issues came up as well, including high scores for Wisconsin for ACT results, additional train service to and from Chicago, and a significant increase in police officers in the city’s 2014 budget.
Bruce Murphy is the editor and chief columnist for the online daily, UrbanMilwaukee.com, and he’s Lake Effect Weekend’s regular news analyst.
Here are his top stories you should know from the past week:
Will there be more police officers patrolling Milwaukee’s streets next year? Murphy says Mayor Tom Barrett hopes so. His 2014 budget wouldincrease the number of officers by 100.
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and state Sen. Alberta Darling are also worried about crime, and took a tour of Ald. Bob Donavan's south side neighborhood. Meanwhile, Ald Mike Murphy suggested the state could address the problem by extending the Act 10 restrictions on collective bargaining to the police and firefighters.
In education news, Wisconsin ranked tied for second with Iowa in the average ACT test scores of students in 2013 with a 22.1 score, while Minnesota took first with an average score of 23.
The state Department of Transportation announced was adding three more express trains on the Amtrak line from Milwaukee to Chicago. Amtrak is also studying adding a second daily train for the route from Chicago to Milwaukee to Twin Cities. And Minnesota is pursuing a project to create a high-speed rail line from Chicago to Twin Cities.
Milwaukee Public Museum president Jay Williams announced he will retire.
Filiberto Murgia, head of the Council for the Spanish or Centro Hispano for more than 30 years, died at age 82.
