FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Michael Luckey, Jefferson County; State unemployment ticks up to 3.3%

May 16, 2025

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Jefferson County Administrator Michael Luckey.

The podcast focuses on local economic development efforts and business investments, including the county’s growing Food and Beverage Innovation Campus that recently landed manufacturer Onego Bio as its latest tenant.

The food ingredient company announced in March that it would purchase 25.9 acres at the site for $777,000, for use as its “flagship” manufacturing facility. The company will be making a fermentation-based egg protein powder there, with projected production capacity equal to 6 million laying hens. The plant is expected to begin operating in 2028.

Luckey shares some insights about the business and how it aims to supply the food production industry with its “bioalbumen” product.

“Looking at some of the news that we have on volatility of egg prices, specifically related to avian influenza and other reasons, having an ability to have a stable, plant-based, fermentation-based egg white replacement essentially will be very, very crucial in food supply chain stability,” he said.

The Food and Beverage Innovation Campus was built on former farmland that was owned by the county for more than 150 years, Luckey explains. County leadership had spent years considering development possibilities for the greenfield site, which he notes is attractive to many developers.

The county’s economic development team identified four main strengths to focus the campus on: food and beverage, agribusiness, advanced manufacturing and biohealth.

“So we made the decision to go out and start looking at ways we could attract businesses in those areas,” Luckey said.

Soy sauce manufacturer Kikkoman purchased the anchor parcel for the campus last year and “has driven a lot of development” in the area, he added.

“The idea again is to build on that same industry hub of food and beverage manufacturing, locate some people where they might be able to use some of the same products, economies of scale, share technologies and really make this a hub and innovation campus,” he said.

Listen to the podcast and see the full list of WisBusiness.com podcasts.

— Wisconsin’s unemployment rose slightly to 3.3% in April but remained below the national rate of 4.2%, the state Department of Workforce Development reports.

Last month’s unemployment rate was 0.4 percentage points higher than it was in April 2024, which DWD flags as a statistically significant change.

Wisconsin also added 15,600 private sector jobs over the year, bringing the total to 2,637,600.

Meanwhile, the state’s labor force participation rate dipped to 65.5% in April while the national rate increased to 62.6%.

DWD Chief Economist Dennis Winters yesterday said it’s still unclear how federal trade policies and layoffs will impact economic trends, but the overall picture in Wisconsin remains stable.

“The numbers are still holding up, still holding up pretty well at near highs for the ones we want high and near lows for the ones we want low,” he said during an online briefing.

See the release.

— The state Senate has signed off on legislation to create specialized courts that would exclusively handle business cases.

The bill, which next heads to the guv’s desk after clearing the Senate yesterday, comes after the liberal majority on the state Supreme Court discontinued a pilot program that used commercial courts for business cases that included disputes over governance or internal affairs.

State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, knocked the proposal, saying it would allow wealthy Wisconsinites to get “their own hand-picked judges while the rest of us wait for our day in court.”

“Creating specialized courts might sound good until you realize this is about creating a rocket docket for guys like Elon Musk,” Roys said.

GOP state Sen. André Jacque, one of the bill’s co-authors, rejected that characterization. The New Franken Republican pointed to the success the courts had during their run as a seven-year pilot program initiated by the state Supreme Court.

The state Supreme Court began a pilot program in 2017 under then-Chief Justice Pat Roggensack to establish business courts in eight counties. The court extended the project twice under the former conservative majority. But it voted 4-3 last year to terminate the pilot project.

The Senate approved the bill 18-15 along party lines.

Under AB 73, the Supreme Court chief justice would select judges who would handle the commercial docket in each district if they agreed to take on the role.

The cases that would go through those courts include unfair competition or antitrust claims, mergers, and real estate construction disputes that exceed $250,000.

— A health care executive survey from Madison consultancy Nordic found few respondents have ready frameworks for rolling out AI applications.

The survey was conducted by New Jersey-based market research group Signet Research Inc. for communications firm Modern Healthcare Content Studio on behalf of Nordic. Between Jan. 29 and Feb. 11, the survey got responses by email from 127 health care executives.

Seventy percent of respondents said they feel at least somewhat confident in their “cross-institutional” governance frameworks, but only 25% have well-established governance in place for AI implementation.

“The disparity suggests that while healthcare executives recognize the importance of AI governance, many are still in the early stages of developing the necessary policies and oversight mechanisms,” authors wrote.

And while 71% of respondents said they have at least some AI infrastructure in place, 52% said those systems need more development or expansion. Plus, only 15% said their infrastructure is “easily scalable,” which Nordic says could pose a challenge for efforts to expand AI-driven initiatives.

Top infrastructure challenges for respondents include data integration and interoperability, with 51%; data analytics tools, 50%; and data security, 37%.

“A key takeaway from these results is that many organizations implement new technologies without a cohesive strategy, forcing teams to adapt their workflows around the technology rather than leveraging it as a tool for operational enhancement,” authors wrote.

Meanwhile, responses suggest AI training is “still not a priority” for most health care organizations, study authors wrote. Just 6% said they have extensive AI training programs in place, while 47% are just starting to prioritize AI training. Another 35% said it’s not a priority but “plans to address it are on the horizon.”

See the full results and release.

— Drug overdose deaths in Wisconsin dropped 36% last year, according to new figures from the CDC.

The decline in the state roughly follows the national trend, as reported U.S. drug overdose deaths fell about 26% last year to 79,526 — the lowest they’ve been since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin had 1,115 reported drug overdose deaths at the end of 2024, compared to 1,744 reported cases at the end of 2023, the CDC reports. Most other states also saw a decline, with the exception of only South Dakota and Nevada.

The agency notes U.S and state figures are underreported due to incomplete data.

See the CDC data.

For more of the most relevant health care news, reports on groundbreaking research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics and WisBusiness.com.

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