Wheeler News - Morning State News #2 - 12/1

Wheeler News Service – Thursday, December 1, 2011 - Morning State News #2

Editor on duty: Thom Gerretsen (715) 389-2373
Story contributions: wheelernews@yahoo.com
Wheeler Blog: http://learfielddata.blogspot.com

Here are the headlines:

Plans are announced for Wisconsin's third medical college in Wausau...
A woman accused of e-mailing death threats to 16 Wisconsin legislators is expected to settle her criminal case this afternoon...
The state D-N-R is offering up to 30-thousand-dollars for projects that help reduce damage from wildfires in urban communities.

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Here are the details:

Wisconsin could get its third medical college in 2013. Plans were announced yesterday for the Wisconsin College of Osteopathic Medicine to be established in Wausau. Doctor Gregg Silberg will be the dean. He says the school would help provide 22-hundred additional doctors that the Wisconsin Hospital Association says will be needed statewide by 2030. And it would be the first school to train osteopathic doctors, who focus on disease prevention. Silberg says two-thirds of osteopathic medical school graduates go into primary care -- the biggest need listed by the hospital association. He said the new school would create doctors for rural and underserved parts of Wisconsin. The Wausau-based Aspirus (ah-spy'-rus) hospital system will help Silberg raise the 70-to-75-million dollars needed to start up the new medical school. The plan requires state approval and national accreditation -- and Silberg is not sure if state funding will be sought. Tim Size of the Rural Wisocnsin Health Cooperative says the new school will go a long way toward solving the state's impending doctor shortage. But U-W Madison medical school dean Robert Golden says the school might not be able to afford the required residency programs. He says the only two osteopathic residency programs in the state are full. And Golden says graduates might have to go to other states to complete their residencies, and will probably practice out-of-state. He calls the new medical school a "bridge to nowhere."

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A Dane County woman accused of e-mailing death threats to 16 Wisconsin legislators is expected to settle her criminal case this afternoon. A plea hearing is scheduled for 26-year-old Katherine Windels of Cross Plains. She's currently charged with two felony counts of making bomb scares, and two misdemeanor counts of using computers to threaten bodily harm. Windels was scheduled to go on trial in January. Prosecutors said she wrote the G-O-P lawmakers in March, on the night the Senate passed the law which virtually ended most public union bargaining. Windels reportedly said she would shoot the lawmakers in the head -- and that bombs were planted around their homes and vehicles. Windels reportedly told investigators she was upset with what the G-O-P did, but was not planning to carry out the threat.

-12/1-

The state D-N-R is offering up to 30-thousand-dollars for projects that help reduce damage from wildfires in urban communities. The money comes from a federal grant. The D-N-R says the projects could include barriers that prevent forest fires from reaching nearby homes -- or removal efforts for dead wood and brush. Proposals can be sent to the D-N-R by January sixth, and the agency will decide by January 31st which projects will be funded. Those groups will have until the middle of 2013 to complete their projects, and only then will they receive the reimbursement funding. That means the groups would have to come up with the full cost of the projects themselves.

(End)