WisBusiness MON News Summary

— A national battle between the short-term rental app Airbnb and the tourism industry has made its way into Wisconsin.

The debate involves a move by Republicans at the state Capitol to block some municipal ordinances such as one in Madison, which limits some short-term rentals to up to 30 days each year. The city of Bayfield, said Mayor Larry MacDonald, passed limits on short-term rentals about 15 years ago after citizens said they were tired of “not knowing who was in the house next to them.”

“It’s another attempt to take away local control, and in our case, it’s taking away local control directly from the residents who asked for this ordinance,” MacDonald said.

The bill’s supporters, meanwhile, say local governments will still be able to regulate those properties and require inspections if they wish. But they can’t have an ordinance that prohibits or “unreasonably restricts” rental of residential properties for more than seven days. Government also shouldn’t limit people’s right to rent out their homes or cabins, an activity that provides an economic boost to the state, supporters say.

“Here’s the fundamental question,” said the bill’s author, state Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha. “Do we err on the side of local government and their rights or do we err on the rights of the individual property owner? If I’m getting that question, nine times out of 10, I’m coming down on the side of the property owner.”

Read more in a new WisBusiness story:

http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.Iml?Article=361942

— The number of Wisconsinites working in manufacturing dropped slightly from 2013 to 2014, but both the dollar amount of shipments and payroll in the industry increased, according to new federal data.

Those findings mirror overall trends in the national manufacturing sector, according to the 2014 Annual Survey of Manufacturers from the federal Census Bureau.

The data show Wisconsin had 428,815 manufacturing workers in 2014, down slightly from the 431,592 workers in 2013. The nation saw a similar drop in manufacturing workers; the state’s manufacturing workforce makes up about 3.8 percent of the nation’s.

Payrolls increased in the state’s manufacturing industry to $22.5 million, up from $22.1 million in 2013. The roughly 1.7 percent increase in payrolls was lower than the 2.5 percent increase in the U.S., which had payrolls of $618.9 billion in 2014.

But Wisconsin shipments increased to $181.9 million in 2014, up from $180.2 million in 2013. Those numbers at the national level showed an increase to $5.9 trillion from $5.8 trillion.

See the state-by-state data:

http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ASM_2014_31AS101&prodType=table

— Dierks Waukesha has been acquired by the national food distributor US Foods, which supplies restaurants, hospitals, schools and other locations.

Although it’s a relatively smaller operator, Dierks Waukesha is among the leading distributors in the Midwest, serving 3,500 customers and having $120 million in sales. Dierks employees will become part of US Foods, and its Waukesha facility will continue to operate, US Foods said in a news release. Also joining US Foods will be a Dierks owner and its CEO.

The acquisition is part of US Foods’ strategy of expanding its Midwest presence seeing “mergers and acquisitions as a key path to continued growth,” the company said.

See more:

http://www.usfoods.com/about-us/media/news-releases/2015/us-foods-agrees-to-acquire-dierks-waukesha.html

— UW-Madison researchers found a way to more easily detect tumors through attaching an antibody to a protein that’s often tied to cancer.

The antibody lit up during scanners while testing the technology on mice, but clinical trials on humans are “some years in the future,” said Weibo Cai, a UW-Madison associate professor of radiology and medical physics. It could help detect the spread of tumors elsewhere in the body.

Cai and his colleagues reported the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

See more:

http://www.engr.wisc.edu/news/archive/2015/Dec18d.html