By Brian E. Clark
RISING
Milwaukee
Philanthropist Joe Zilber is fulfilling the final piece of his
multi-million dollar pledge to improve Milwaukee with a $1.5 million
donation to the United Way of Greater Milwaukee.
The gift completes the 90-year-old Brew City native’s promise to give
$50 million to Milwaukee organizations, nonprofits and institutions to
improve his home town. Zilber, a real estate baron, is redeveloping
the blighted, 20-acre Pabst Brewery site north of downtown Milwaukee.
The United Way gift, to be distributed annually over 10 years through
the new Joseph and Vera Zilber Community Fund, will support United
Way’s Breaking the Cycle of Poverty initiative focusing on early
childhood education, preventing teen pregnancy and sexual violence
against girls, job training, and improving financial stability.
Other Zilber gifts include a $30 million donation to the Marquette
University Law School – his alma mater – $10 million to the proposed
UW-Milwaukee School of Public Health and $3 million to the Milwaukee
Jewish Federation and $1 million to Boys and Girls Club of Greater
Milwaukee. Some of the donations, a Zilber spokesman said, remain
confidential.
MIXED
Home heating costs
We Energies says its natural gas customers can expect to see home
heating costs dip 1 percent to 5 percent this winter, as long as
natural gas markets remain stable and the weather is normal. But other
state utilities are predicting increases of up to 13 percent.
The forecast for the big Milwaukee utility is more optimistic than a
12-state federal Energy Information Administration winter outlook that
predicts an 11 percent increase. But a We Energies spokesman says the
reason for the difference is because his company is basing its forecast
on its own service territory.
Meanwhile, MGE and Alliant Energy, both Madison-based utilities, are
predicting that home heating costs will increase by between 5 and 10
percent this winter. Elsewhere, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. in Green
Bay is telling customers to expect bills similar to or slightly higher
than last year.
And Xcel Energy, which serves parts of western Wisconsin, says typical
residential customers are likely to see heating costs about 13 percent
higher than a year ago, mostly because last winter’s warm weather means
customers used less natural gas.
FALLING
Minimum markup law
A federal judge has ruled Wisconsin’s minimum markup law on gasoline is
unconstitutional because the state has failed to properly monitor it.
U.S. Judge William Callahan Jr. in Milwaukee wrote in his ruling,
issued Friday, that Wisconsin had failed to meet monitoring
requirements as anti-trust laws require through the Sherman Act. He
noted that the state tweaked the minimum markup formula for gasoline in
1998, when gas was going for about $1 a gallon, but hasn’t touched it
since.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit Lotus Business Group LLC filed alleging
that Flying J Inc. had repeatedly ignored the markup law, which
prohibits vendors from selling gas below the “average posted terminal
price” plus a 9.18% minimum. Flying J had argued that the law was
unconstitutional under the commerce clause. Callahan rejected that
argument but agreed that it violated anti-trust laws and ruled in
Flying J’s favor, dismissing the suit.
Read the ruling:
