Western Wisconsin leads nation in farm bankruptcies.again
Hope Kirwan
Western Wisconsin continues to lead the nation in farm bankruptcies, reporting the highest number of new filings in 2020.
But bankruptcy experts say most of those producers are looking for ways to keep farming, instead of going out of business.
Federal court data shows the Western District had 39 new Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings in 2020, a chapter specifically for farmers and anglers.
The Eastern District of Wisconsin came in fourth in the nation with 30 new filings, right behind Kansas and Nebraska.
Roger McEowen is a professor of agricultural law and taxation at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas, who helped write the current bankruptcy laws for farms. He said it’s important to realize why farmers file a Chapter 12 bankruptcy in the first place.
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NEW RESIDENT: A change at the top brings new issues for farmers as President Joe Biden executes his slate of issues. We review our five-part series looking at what s ahead. Impact of President Biden’s agriculture plan will influence actions on climate, taxes, higher minimum wage, ag trade and WOTUS.
As past Farm Progress surveys show, farmers traditionally vote more conservatively and now find themselves trying to reconcile what the future political outlook will be under the Biden administration after four years of President Donald Trump. As we recently detailed in our five-part series, the sky is not falling, but farmers need to be aware of what could be coming to best navigate the waters ahead.
Montgomery will expand from five council districts to seven in 2022
January 27, 2021 | 9:51 pm
January 28, 2021
Montgomery County approved two new County Council members in November, which means two more districts.
The county’s five districts will now need to be divided into seven, starting with the 2022 election. The council will expand from 9 to 11 members.
There are currently four at-large members and five district members.
To determine how the boundaries will be drawn for 2022, the County Council appointed an 11-member Redistricting Commission on Tuesday to provide a plan and report by Nov. 15.
The county received 108 applications to serve on the commission. The county picked 32 people to be interviewed and chose 11 for the commission.
Peter Dazely/iStock/Getty Images Plus Farmers be aware if tax rates go higher, death tax exemption lowered and step-up basis at death modified or eliminated.
This is the third installment of a special multi-part series offering what we might see under the incoming President Joe Biden administration.
“Plan for the worst and hope for the best.” Words of wisdom in dealing with what could be a very problematic tax situation for farmers, according to Roger McEowen, professor of agricultural law and taxation at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan.
“I try to tell farmers, divorce yourself from the politics of it and deal with the reality of it. The problem is right now, we don’t know what the reality is going to be until we see how the politics of this plays out,” says McEowen. “It’s horrible to have your business dependent on what people in Congress do who don’t understand the full impact.”
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Angela Onwuachi-Willig is one of the country’s leading scholars of race and the law, but in a letter addressing her students after the killing of George Floyd, she confessed that she had struggled over what she would say to them. As a Black woman and a law school dean the first dean of color at Boston University’s School of Law and first Black woman to lead a top-20 law school Onwuachi-Willig wrote that she wondered if she
could say anything publicly, “imagining the backlash when certain words come out of my Black mouth.
“Perhaps surprising to some of you, racism regularly disempowers the seemingly powerful dean,” wrote Onwuachi-Willig, who was appointed as dean, and a professor of law, in 2018.