WED AM News: Report challenges ‘brain drain’ concerns for Wisconsin; Nurses at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital file charges with NLRB, union announces

September 9, 2026

— A new report from a UW-Madison think tank challenges the notion that Wisconsin struggles with “brain drain,” arguing a lack of educated people coming to the state is a greater challenge.

The Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy, or CROWE, yesterday issued a report arguing the issue of “brain drain” is greatly exaggerated for Wisconsin and based on a flawed analysis. It refers to concerns that have been raised about the state’s college-educated adults leaving to work elsewhere at a higher rate than those arriving.

But report authors say the widely cited ranking behind these worries doesn’t fully capture this idea.

They note the state is ranked No. 2 in the country for the difference between the share of Wisconsin-born people with a bachelor’s degree or higher now living elsewhere, and those born elsewhere who now live in the state with the same educational attainment. This difference of 14.6 percentage points — 59.8% versus 45.2%, respectively — is the second highest among U.S. states.

Authors argue this figure “captures a difference in educational composition” rather than migration, since it doesn’t include when any of those people changed residence.

“A second-place rank on that statistic does not mean Wisconsin has the nation’s second-worst current loss of college graduates. … A Wisconsin-born 35-year-old living in Minneapolis is included whether she moved last year, after college, or with her parents as a child,” authors wrote.

They argued the “more distinctive finding” is who comes to Wisconsin, noting the state attracted college graduates from beyond 500 miles at about 62% of the rate implied by its share of the college-educated population. That’s compared to about 86% for the median state.

Among those arrivals, 29.5% were originally born in Wisconsin, compared to 16.2% for the median state.

“Excluding returnees, Wisconsin’s long-distance attraction index falls to 0.52, compared with 0.83 in the median state … Wisconsin is better at attachment than attraction, and so is much of the upper Midwest,” authors wrote.

See more from the report.

— Nurses at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison have filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board against their employer, alleging violations of federal labor laws, SEIU Wisconsin announced.

The union yesterday said the charges include failing to engage in legally required negotiations, discriminating against nurses by barring union information while allowing non-union information, “destroying and confiscating” union materials, and threatening to discipline nurses for unionization efforts.

The move follows the NLRB moving to certify the union election for hundreds of nurses at the hospital, who voted by an 89% margin in favor of unionizing in June.

“SSM should be investing in staffing, support and retention of nurses, not wasting time and resources fighting our union, which is our voice to speak up for our patients,” Hannah Joers, a nurse in the Cardiac Cath Lab at St. Mary’s Hospital, said in a statement provided by the union.

In response to the union’s allegations, a spokesperson for SSM Health said the employer isn’t violating federal labor law and believes “there are unresolved questions” about the election process that should be reviewed by the NLRB.

“That is why we have appealed the Regional Director’s decision to the full Board,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We believe collective bargaining should await the outcome of our appeals.”

The spokesperson said SSM Health disagrees with several characterizations made in the union’s release but shares a “common goal of supporting high-quality patient care and a positive work environment” for its employees.

Meanwhile, 380 nurses at SSM Health Dean Medical Group clinics in Dane County are set to vote on unionizing later this month.

See more in recent coverage.

— State officials have announced 42 locations getting grant funding for new electric vehicle charging stations with $25 million in federal infrastructure dollars.

Gov. Tony Evers and the state Department of Transportation yesterday announced the new EV charging station sites, supported with funding from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“With gas prices that are sky-high thanks to President Trump’s war in Iran, expanding our electric vehicle charging infrastructure and helping families save money on fuel is as important as ever,” Evers said in a statement.

The state DOT has now awarded about $62 million for 120 EV charging projects in the state, after earlier grant awards were provided for stations at businesses located along Wisconsin’s Alternative Fuel Corridor system, including gas stations, restaurants and lodging.

Wisconsin has also finished funding EV charging sites at every 50-mile mark along key interstates and highways, according to yesterday’s announcement. As a result, the Evers administration is allowed to award grants to more areas of the state, the release shows.

The 42 newest sites are on U.S. and state highway corridors that weren’t previously considered for funding under the Wisconsin Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, the guv’s office says.

Individual grant awards range from around $400,000 to more than $900,000 per site.

See charging locations here.

See the release.

— Attorney General Josh Kaul called for state lawmakers to pass guardrails on law enforcement agencies’ use of Flock cameras.

Speaking yesterday at a Milwaukee Press Club-WisPolitics-Milwaukee Rotary luncheon, Kaul said standards for how police can use the automated license plate readers would set clear expectations for the public on their use and keep them from being used for “dragnet general surveillance.”

“There hasn’t been the kind of robust discussion or debate in the public forum where it should be happening, which is in our Legislature,” Kaul said.

He suggested that include regular audits of the system’s usage and limiting the number of officials that can access the system and types of cases for which the cameras could be used.

DOJ spokesperson Riley Vetterkind said that a “restricted subset” of Division of Criminal Investigation agents can access data from Flock and other automated license plate readers, that queries must be associated with a case, and that the division audits its use of license plate readers.

Kaul also said he doesn’t “see any reason offhand why private contractors should have access to that information,” except for police subcontractors, after the Racine County sheriff cancelled its Flock contract when it learned Flock was generating a separate data set that it was marketing as a “traffic analytics” tool.

See more coverage.

— UW-Whitewater’s business school has become the first in the country to earn an impact accreditation from the European Foundation for Management Development Global, the university announced.

Its College of Business and Economics is the first business school in the United States to get the Business School Impact System label from the accreditation body, joining a group of 105 schools in 30 countries around the world.

The accreditation reflects an assessment of seven key factors: financial, educational, business development, intellectual, regional ecosystem, societal, and image. It’s based on an independent, evidence-based analysis, according to yesterday’s announcement.

Dean Paul Ambrose notes the label isn’t a ranking or self-reported achievement, and the college is “extraordinarily proud” to be the first in the country to meet its standards.

“This is the result of an independent, globally recognized process that required us to prove in a data-backed manner that what we do in this college transforms lives and strengthens our region,” he said in a statement.

The assessment done in May found the college has a $423 million total annual regional economic impact across a 12-county area in southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. It also found three-quarters of graduates land their first job in the region, which had 11,400 alumni working there this spring.

See more on the BSIS accreditation.

See the release.

— UW-Madison researchers have published a study showing up to 94% of papillary thyroid cancers were “likely overdiagnosed” over a 30-year period.

That means they were detected and addressed with surgery without reducing rates of death from these cancers, according to yesterday’s announcement from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

One of the lead authors on the study is Dr. Louise Davies, a professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the school. Davies says overdiagnosis can “lead to unnecessary surgery or other interventions, with side effects of needing lifelong thyroid hormone therapy” as well as unnecessary psychological and financial harm.

Through autopsy studies, about 10% of adults have been found to have small papillary thyroid cancer nodules that didn’t contribute to their death. This kind of cancer is relatively common and “usually” doesn’t progress, according to the school.

The study focused on data from 1991 to 2019, finding 72% to 94% of these cancers found during that period were likely overdiagnosed.

A major factor driving this problem is widespread imaging such as ultrasound finding these cancers, Davies says.

By modeling the impact of reducing the use of ultrasounds for nodules that can’t be felt in a physical exam, researchers found a one-third reduction would lower diagnosis by 17% and a two-thirds reduction would lower diagnoses by 41%. But even with those reductions, mortality rates were impacted by less than 0.1% in the model.

Meanwhile, the study also found women were overdiagnosed more than men. Over the study period, up to 574,000 women and up to 155,000 men were overdiagnosed, the scientists found.

Dr. David Francis, study author and professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the UW SMPH, says small changes to referrals could cut overdiagnosis by tens of thousands of cases each year without increasing deaths.

“This is a powerful opportunity to create guidelines that would help align practice with evidence and reduce overtreatment,” Francis said in the release.

See the study.

See the release.

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