Angela and Darryl Morin are the descendents of Latino migrant workers. The sacrifices of their forbearers helped to pave the path for their unique American entrepreneurial journey. Their Milwaukee company, Advanced Wireless Inc., is on the verge of substantial growth. Read more in the cover story of the print edition of this week's Small Business Times. Other highlights from the new issue of SBT include a story about Associated Bank's plans for expansion in downtown Milwaukee, an assessment of the downtown Milwaukee condominium market and the SBT Manufacturing Spotlight.

Home sales and prices throughout most of the country, including the Milwaukee market are poised for improvement in the second half of 2008, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Speaking at the NAR Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo on Thursday, Yun said "middle-America" cities that performed evenly over the past few years, such as Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Kansas City, Mo., are likely to experience home price gains in the 20 to 30 percent range over the next five years.
Markets such as Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix could see prices go up as much as 50 percent during that time period, Yun said.
Yun blamed most of the softening of the housing market over the last year on the "subprime mess," where consumers with blemished credit records received loans they could not afford when the interest rates reset to higher levels.
"In fact, if you look at where home prices fell the most, it's the markets where subprime loans were prevalent," Yun said.
Cape Coral, Fla.; Detroit; Las Vegas; Miami; Orlando, Fla.; Phoenix and Riverside, Calif. were among the cities with the highest percentages of subprime lending and where the markets suffered the biggest downturns, he said.
"It's important to keep things in context," Yun said. "While much of the media is focusing on the fact that the rate of foreclosures doubled this year from historic averages, the foreclosure rate has gone from 1 percent of all homeowners with mortgages to 2 percent. Foreclosures are being driven principally by subprime loans."
Now that the subprime market has dried up, and loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration and those purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are making a comeback, the housing markets will strengthen and prices are likely to begin a steady uptick in the coming months, Yun said.
Yun urged the Congress and White House to enact NAR-supported legislation to modernize FHA programs, reform regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), establish a first-time home buyer tax credit and make the temporary increases to the conforming loan limits established by the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 permanent.
"These measures would quickly stabilize the housing markets and get fence-sitters into the market to buy homes," Yun said. "There are many reasons for people to get into the housing market today, and very few reasons not to. With the plentiful supply of homes for sale at affordable prices, interest rates approaching 40-year lows, and the strong track record of housing as a good long-term investment, conditions are ripe for buyers," he added. "Those are the facts, plain and simple."

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle today issued vetoes and signed a budget repair bill that he said will keep the state’s commitment to pay vital school aid payments, increase cuts to state spending and build a reserve of more than $100 million over the biennium.
Doyle faulted Assembly Republicans for refusing to approve a hospital assessment fee that he said would have secured Wisconsin’s "fair share" of federal Medicaid revenues.
"Despite overwhelming support of the state’s major business and hospital associations, Assembly Republicans made the shortsighted decision to stop a hospital assessment that would have brought $450 million in federal money to the state and closed $125 million of the deficit," Doyle said. "That left the Legislature pushing off vital school aid payments that would risk significant cuts to education in the next budget and had them rely on a tobacco refinancing scheme that went too far.”
In making his vetoes, Doyle said he followed four principles:

• A budget deficit should not be solved by pushing off bills such as the school aid payments.
• Dramatic spending increases cannot be part of the answer.
• The budget repair should make the most of market conditions.
• The state must build a reserve to protect against economic downturns.

For more information and for reaction to Doyle's vetoes, visit WisPolitics.com, a media partner of Small Business Times.

Wisconsin's 124 nonprofit hospitals own at least $6 billion dollars worth of tax-exempt property that could be generating at least $117 million in property taxes yearly to help support local services, if they were taxed accordingly, according to a new report from the Institute for Wisconsin's Future (IWF).
The report is titled "Hospitable Taxes: How Nonprofit Hospitals Profit From Wisconsin's Outdated Tax System."
The tax-exempt hospitals and medical centers are located in 100 communities statewide. Because they generally do not pay property taxes, homeowners and business owners are forced to pay the hospitals' share for the police, fire, transit, road maintenance, schools and other basic systems of government the hospitals themselves rely upon, the report stated.
Because the hospitals avoid paying property taxes, a family of four in effect subsidizes the nonprofit hospital industry an average of at least $88 each year, according to the report.
"While non-profit hospitals argue their charitable work justifies their tax exemptions, the fact is that many large non-profit hospitals are indistinguishable in their operations from for-profit hospitals. Executive salaries, charitable care and annual revenue surpluses are every bit the same in the big non-profit institutions as in comparable for-profit ones," the IWF said.
The report's recommendations include updating hospital property value information and reviewing the state criteria for awarding nonprofit status to hospitals.
To view the full report, visit http://www.wisconsinsfuture.org/publications/taxes/Hospital_Taxes_5_08.pdf. The IWF is a nonprofit research and advocacy organization based in Milwaukee. Funded primarily by philanthropies, it is working to modernize the state and local tax systems in order to provide adequate funding for public structures in a manner that is fair to all taxpayers.

Aurora Health Care was the most cost-efficient hospital system serving the Milwaukee area in 2006, according to a new study by Benefit Services Group Inc., a Pewaukee-based benefits and health care consulting firm.
Aurora's cost efficiency ranking was 9 percent better than the study's community average.
The next-most efficient systems, in descending order, were Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, Froedtert and Community Health and ProHealth Care.
The study focused on claims paid by insurers, self-funded plans, workers
compensation, HMOs and other commercial payment systems in the Milwaukee
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which includes Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington
and Waukesha counties.
The study noted that in January 2008, the boards of Froedtert & Community Health and Columbia St. Mary's signed a joint operating agreement to form Progressive Health System. As a merged entity, the combined systems would have ranked third in the Milwaukee area survey in 2006, based on their separate results.
To gain access to the full report, visit www.hctrends.com.

SBT China correspondent Einar Tangen says Wisconsin businesspeople would do well to make the effort to learn about and understand Chinese culture and art. Read more in this week's Dispatches From China.

Centurion Data Systems (CDS), a network infrastructure provider, announced that it has acquired Lake Systems Inc., a Pewaukee software firm that specializes in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).
With Lake Systems, CDS now has a customizable, robust and fully integrated accounting, manufacturing and distribution application.
"This is very exciting for us. The Midwest has a lot of manufacturing so it gives us an 'in' into a segment of the market that wasn't previously a focus," said Bill King, senior vice president of Pewaukee-based Centurion Data Systems. "Centurion Data Systems has always provided network infrastructure but our clients are mostly professional service firms, law firms, technical writers, and architects. The addition of an ERP package opens the door to working with manufacturers."
With an ERP application, CDS clients will have a seamless integration between accounting, distribution (including order processing, inventory management and purchasing) and manufacturing (shop floor, routing and bill of materials). Additional customized components can be engineered, including asset tracking, consumable goods tracking, quoting, bar coding, private labeling, lot control and audio/visual shop floor alerts.
"Joining a company like CDS is the ideal scenario," said Rick Benkstein, who founded Lake Systems in 1990 and assumes the title of manufacturing consultant in sales with CDS. "I've been an entrepreneur for almost 20 years. Now I'm part of a team which has expertise in areas that I don't, and I bring to them my ERP background."
"Rick will continue to service his former Lake Systems customers and will help us develop new business," King said. "His strength is his knowledge of manufacturing best practices and he shares CDS' commitment to helping clients use the full potential of their technology software and systems to support their business objectives."

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker announced that the Lubar Family Foundation will make a $65,000 donation to bring back lifeguards at Bradford Beach this summer.
"Shel and Marianne Lubar have offered a generous gift to provide lifeguard services at Bradford Beach this summer," Walker said. "I appreciate that their foundation has filled a need that will add to our public safety efforts for visitors to the beach."
In recent years, the lifeguard positions were eliminated by county budget cuts. Bradford Beach has seen increased activity with the addition of several planned recreational events for the public.

Harley-Davidson Inc. today announced that the rock band Foo Fighters has been added to the lineup of musical talent performing during the company's 105th Anniversary Celebration in Milwaukee this summer.
Foo Fighters, along with special guest Three Days Grace, will play Friday, Aug. 29, at the outdoor venue dubbed the Roadhouse at the Lakefront, which is located just north of the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Stand-alone concert tickets for the Foo Fighters concert in Milwaukee will go on sale at 8 a.m. on Saturday, May 31, at www.ticketmaster.com. Purchasers do not need a Harley-Davidson 105th Anniversary ticket to secure tickets for the Foo Fighters concert. All tickets for Foo Fighters are general admission lawn seating and cost $27.50, plus shipping and handling charges
Harley previously announced that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will headline the 105th celebration on Saturday, Aug. 30. For additional information about the celebration, visit www.harley-davidson.com/105th.

More than 300 construction and design professionals attended the first green building conference recently hosted by Brookfield-based Hunzinger Construction Co. The conference was held in Hunzinger's newly renovated training building, which is LEED-platinum-certified, the first building in the state and one of the first in the world to achieve that rating. Read more in the latest edition of SBT Around Town.

Oshkosh-based The Hoffmaster Group Inc. announced it will close its plant in Appleton, ultimately cutting 300 jobs. However, the company plans to expand its Clintonville plant and add jobs there. Read more in SBT's daily roundup of headlines from newspapers across the state at www.biztimes.com/#news.

The BizTimes Stock Index recovered 1.87 points to close at 167.53 Thursday, but local stocks slipped back into the muck again this morning, with decliners far outnumbering advancers. The largest local decliners this morning were Kohl's Corp. (down $2.25 to $48.24), Manpower Inc. (down $1.62 to $67.70) and Weyco Group Inc. (down $1.07 to $27.11). The largest local advancers this morning were Bucyrus International Inc. (up $3.96 to $142.65) and Joy Global Inc. (up 55 cents to $80.85). The BizTimes Stock Index was created by Small Business Times and is monitored by North Shore Bank. The index, which measures the stock values of publicly held companies based in southeastern Wisconsin, is updated daily and can be viewed at www.biztimes.com.

Busy readers of the BizTimes Daily can get a jumpstart on the weekend ahead by reading the OnMilwaukee.com Weekend Preview. OnMilwaukee.com is a media partner of SBT.

Small Business Times has launched the Wisconsin Golf Event Guide, an online resource that connects business people with golf outings that raise funds for charities. Businesses also can learn how to emulate one local company that has "adopted" a local nonprofit. Read more in today's Milwaukee Biz Blog.