Two scary bills fail to reach votes in the state Senate and Assembly. Click on the titles to read the whole stories.

Mining bill headed back to drawing board. Sen. Tom Tiffany is taking Senate Bill 349 back to the drawing board after a ten hours of testimony from environmentalists and local governments. The bill would have severely limited the control that local governments could exert over frac sand and other non-mettalic mining operations in their jurisdictions. Tiffany plans to revamp the legislation and reintroduce it, though probably not for another year. Kim Lamoreaux, Baraboo News Republic, 10/30/13.

Bill allowing concealed weapons in schools won't get vote. The state Assembly will not be voting on a bill allowing concealed carry in schools. The bill in question would have applied only to off-duty, retired and out-of-state police officers. Joel Kleefisch, the bill's sponsor, planned to go ahead with a vote in the Assembly Criminal Justice Committee to expand the proposal to allow anyone with a concealed carry permit to carry guns in schools but concede that even in this Republican-controlled committee there were not enough votes to pass. Appleton Post-Crescent, 10/30/13.

Last week, the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board voted 6 to 2 against a frac sand mine proposed next to the Wisconsin River, near the Iowa border.

Those who spoke at the Board's meeting were overwhelmingly opposed to the mine, as were the Board members themselves.

"The members felt that visual intrusions from potential dust and lighting would cause the activity to become visible from the river," explained the Board's director.

In other good environmental news, Entergy announced it would close its Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor at the end of 2014.  The nuclear company said the reactor was "no longer financially viable."

Wisconsin's Kewaunee nuclear reactor was shut down in May, also due to economic factors.

On July 3, the city of Joliet, Illinois announced that the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is withdrawing its plans to build a for-profit immigration detention center in that city.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights applauded the news as "a victory for the many local residents of Joliet and surrounding communities who took strong leadership to oppose the for-profit jail.  The Concerned Citizens of Joliet made their voices heard at city council meetings, educated their neighbors, built alliances, and registered and turned out voters in the April elections.  These efforts crossed ethnic and racial lines and showed that Joliet’s diverse communities will unite against the common enemy of mass incarceration devastating their neighborhoods."