The Daily Tribune from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin • Page 3

Tuesday, May 7, 2002 3A Daily Tribune, Wisconsin Rapids State BRIEFS Doyle asks clerks to release legal bills legislative employees involved in the secret investigation being conducted by district attorneys in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The district attorneys are investigating allegations of illegal campaigning on state time by employees of the partisan legislative caucuses. The allegations surfaced last spring in a series in the Wisconsin State Journal. The caucuses, one for each party in each house, have since been dissolved under an agreement legislative leaders reached with the state's Elections and Ethics boards last fall. Taxpayers have paid $518,000 in fees for employees of Legislature MADISON (AP) Attorney General James Doyle urged the Legislature's chief clerks Monday to release the names of employees who have had their legal bills paid by taxpayers.

The clerks have refused to release the names of those employees involved in an investigation into illegal campaign activity despite Dane County Circuit Judge Sarah O'Brien's ruling Friday ordering them to do so. An appeal is planned. In a letter sent to the two clerks Monday, Doyle said appealing the court decision "only serves to tarnish Wisconsin's tradition of open government and wastes taxpayer dollars during these difficult fiscal times." "It is time to release the names of the individuals whose legal bills are being paid in the caucus investigations," Doyle wrote. So far, Wisconsin taxpayers have paid $518,000 in legal fees for Pat Fuller has said he planned to appeal the decision ordering the release of the names. He did not immediately return a telephone message left Monday.

Senate chief clerk Don Schneider was out of town, but he released a statement Monday saying he would seek a stay of the order to release the names. Randall Nash and Tom Pyper, attorneys for the legislative clerks, did not immediately return telephone messages left at their offices Monday. Dreps said they told him they still were consulting with the clerks about how to proceed. Three newspapers The Capital Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin State Journal sought the court order requiring the clerks to comply with the state's Open Records Law and release the names of the state employees getting their legal bills paid by taxpayers. The newspapers also asked for punitive damages, arguing the clerks' decision to withhold the names was arbitrary, said Robert Dreps, the newspapers' attorney.

That issue has yet to be resolved as of the lawsuit Assembly assistant chief clerk sir y- xt, Jobs harder to come by for college graduates MILWAUKEE (AP) College graduates in Wisconsin and around the country are facing a tougher job market than just a few years ago, school officials and recruiters said. A study from the National Association of Colleges and Employers finds that across the country, the entry-level job market for graduates declined by more than 36 percent across the country in 2001-02. The average starting salary for business school graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has fallen 5 percent, to $39,419, school officials said. The salary decline wasn't completely unexpected, as salaries had climbed steadily for eight years, said Karen Stauffacher, assistant dean of the UW-Madison's School of Business career center. "There had to be a ceiling somewhere," she said.

The college job market generally takes about six months to catch up to the economy, said Phil Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. "We are hoping that things pick up by the end of summer," Gardner said. "We are telling graduates to keep in touch with employers, especially the smaller companies that tend to hire first." At the Milwaukee School of Engineering, the number of company recruiters visiting the campus this spring fell sharply from some previous years. 3 aviation and needed a place to park the plane," said his son, Don Ripp. "They decided to build a hangar.

Then somebody decided they wanted to build a house next to the runway in the early '50s." The Waunakee Airport is now one of at least 440 U.S. air parks, a number that increases by five or 10 a year, said David Sclair, retired publisher of General Aviation News and publisher of Living With Your Plane. About 25 percent of air park residents use their planes for business. STEVE APPSAssoclatod Pren John Rowe, a pilot and emergency room physician who commutes to Airport recently. The airport is Wisconsin's only residential air park work at a hospital in Freeport, takes off from the Waunakee that is open to the flying public.

Homes line both sides of airport's runway cool?" she said. John Rowe pays $18 in gas for a round trip from his home at the Waunakee airport to his job as an emergency room doctor in Freeport, 111. He would pay about $8.50 if he drove his car. "If you fly, it's always a pleasant experience," Rowe said. The airport started in 1946 when Jerome Ripp persuaded his father to let him mow a hayfield for a grass airstrip.

Ripp eventually sold lots to pilots. "The airport kind of evolved as friends of his got involved in Testimony taken on do-not-call list MADISON (AP) Telemarketers, insurance agents and funeral industry representatives urged state officials Monday to alter Wisconsin's new do-not call list before it is implemented next year. They believe the state should change the law to lessen the impact on their businesses. They spoke Monday at the first of a dozen hearings on the new law. State regulators probably will not make any major changes to the statute before it takes effect, said Jim Harsdorf, secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

The agency proposed rules to implement the do-not-call list that was included in the two-year budget Gov. Scott McCallum signed in August. It allows state residents to sign up for a list barring telemarketers from calling them and also creates new regulations for telemarketers. The rules will be finalized in July and forwarded to the Legislature for final consideration. Search intensifies for missing girl, 7 MILWAUKEE (AP)-The search for a missing 7-year-old girl intensified Monday as police enlisted additional help from the sheriffs department.

Police Chief Arthur Jones said Alexis Patterson apparently ran away Friday after she left for school. Jones said "things did not go well" with her mother that morning, and investigators believe she intentionally did not go to school. "We have no suspect because we have no reason to believe right now that a crime has been committed," Jones said. The police department had more than 40 officers looking for the girl Monday and planned to use a helicopter in its search. "This is every parent's worst nightmare.

We will not rest until Alexis is located," Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said. The girl's stepfather, LaRon Bourgeois, walked her to a corner outside school Friday, but her teacher said she did not show up in the classroom. "If someone has her, please just return her," Bourgeois said. "Just let her out on the corner. Someone will see her." She is about 4 feet tall, weighs 43 pounds and has light brown skin.

Murder suspect faces competency evaluation CHIPPEWA FALLS (AP) A judge ordered a new competency evaluation Monday for a man accused of killing his mother. Bill Marquardt already was found competent to stand trial on animal cruelty charges in Eau Claire County, but Chippewa County Circuit Judge Roderick Cameron said that does not mean Marquardt is ready for a murder trial in Chippewa County. Marquardt, 26, is accused of killing his mother, Mary Jane Marquardt, in March 2000. "The case is nothing short of very complex," Cameron said before ordering a new evaluation. The results of the evaluation will be presented at a June 13 hearing.

Cameron delayed Marquardt's trial in January 2001 and in February 2002 because the judge ruled Marquardt was not competent to stand trial. Marquardt spent a year in the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison. Cameron ordered a competency evaluation in part because of a new opinion from Donna Minter, a psychiatrist who evaluated Marquardt for the Eau Claire County case. Tests awaited on gun death of man MERRILL (AP) Three weeks after a man was found dead in a motel room with a gunshot wound to the head, police do not know if his death was a suicide, homicide or an accident, an investigator said Monday. "We don't have any officers here who are gunshot wound experts.

Expertise lies with the Crime Lab in Madison," Lt. Ned Seubert said. Police are awaiting results of examinations of evidence and samples obtained during an autopsy shortly after Ronald Walker, 45, was found dead April 14 about 6 a.m. at the Pine Ridge Inn, Seubert said. Police have only said there were some unusual circumstances at the scene but did not elaborate.

A handgun was found in the room. Walker had moved to Merrill about three months before he died and worked as a night desk clerk at the motel. Walker's wife lived with him at the motel. 26th nity" of homes built around an airstrip. Wisconsin has three other air parks that are not open to the public, said Tom Thomas, chief of airport management and education for the state Bureau of Aeronautics.

Meyer and her husband decided to move their family to Waunakee, a Dane County village of more than 8,000 people, after flying into the airport 10 years ago. "We landed here and I noticed a for-sale sign on the back of a house and I looked at my husband and we both said, Wouldn't that be mansion suggested his Web site to solicit suggestions about how to fix the state's $1.1 billion budget deficit. "We started getting 20 to 50 an hour," said Debbie Monterrey-Millett, a spokeswoman for McCallum. "It was crazy for a while, but it was nice to hear from people with ideas." Many of the e-mails, reviewed by The Post-Crescent of Appleton, came in unsigned. No.

oooo ,2002 Schofield Amiiivers ary Airplane hangars replace car garages WAUNAKEE (AP) These homes have runways in their backyards and attached airplane hangars instead of garages. "We walk out our laundry room door into the hangar and then right out to the runway," said Sally Meyer, who is one of more than 30 pilots who live in homes along the runway at the Waunakee Airport. The airport is Wisconsin's only public "air park" or "fly-in commu Sale of governor's MADISON (AP) Selling the governor's mansion, turning down thermostats in government buildings and freezing pay for state officials were among hundreds of cost-saving suggestions made by Wisconsin residents to reduce the state budget. Gov. Scott McCallum has received more than 1,200 e-mails from people since Jan.

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