A SURPRISE FOR ME IN THOSE EXHIBITS THAT HELPED DEFEAT WISCONSIN VOTER ID LAW

By Dominique Paul Noth

The things you discover in Google search! I had never realized that an article I had written as editor of Milwaukee Labor Press was used by the winning side in that sizeable US Eastern District Court decision striking down that bizarre Wisconsin Voter ID law.

Judge Lynn Adelman

It happened April 29 when, combining complaints into a single trial and decision,  US Judge Lynn Adelman forcefully struck down Wisconsin’s Voter ID law as unconstitutional denial of minority voting rights, among other errors. 

It was a decision so sweeping and imposing judicial review that no legislative remedy is available to Gov. Scott Walker who wanted the limitations in place before the November election.  His extremist supporters may fume and rail, as Assembly majority leader Robin Vos assuredly did, but wiser GOP heads actually read the ruling. They seem to be quietly backing off for now.

Of course I am exaggerating the importance of my story’s presence in the trial exhibits. One set of plaintiffs on the winning side submitted 808 academic and journalistic citations, emails, videos and opinions (mine was 187 on their list). If Adelman worked his way through  all those exhibits in the case that started many court hearings earlier as “League of United Latin American Citizens, et al” he may have come across it.  Who knows?

But I do know his reputation as a thorough judge with a humanistic bent (which infrequently had led to reversals on appeal but seldom with basic constitutional issues).  No one has ever claimed he is not scrupulous in gathering research and testimony that directly bears on an issue. That, and the failure to mention the high regard he is held in by the legal community, nor  how he was blocked by the GOP in the US  senate when nominated to join the appeals court, were among the errors in the recent JS side by side comparison of him with fellow US Judge Rudolph Randa.

Yet frankly, I didn’t remember directly writing  on this ridiculous voter ID law, unless someone was reading my mind.   So when a friend sent me the trial’s list of exhibits and I was up there, that launched some  surprise and memory lane research.

What, I wondered, had I written about to provide evidence for the winning side? I know the right wing likes to beat me up as a flaming leftist, while I think of myself as solidly left – like most of America, I suspect, when they vote. I do understand how partisan our politics have become and how a concern about factual elements can now be used as examples of extremism by RightWisconsin and company. But what had I written?

Since I served as editor the Milwaukee Labor Press for a decade, and that article was from that era, I know the drill. Most of those stories dealt with mundane statistics and meetings, and debates within the labor community over things like highways vs trains, mining vs environment, minority hiring vs nepotism. Yet political hired guns on the right see my union credentials and automatically dismiss any conclusions. So  what had I said that they could beat up?

Turns out the winning side in the voter ID case had turned to a deep analysis I did in early 2012 exploring the US Census of 2010 and the enormous growth of the Latino population in Wisconsin.  The story is still online. 

My 2012 story emphasized the importance of the Latino vote by
picturing US Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin (she won) with Latino
activist Jesus Salas and  Rep. JoCasta Zamarippa.

It reflected that the Latino citizen population was growing immensely, would probably not erupt for years, but both parties had better look out when it did erupt. It made some observations but the article was heavily based on data.

I didn’t like to think that a factual study of US Census data, with my particular brand of commentary, would outrage the right, but sure enough it had (my Google search revealed).

The story detailed quite factually the growth of Latino voting power in Wisconsin and suggested that Wisconsin was slowly looking more like Milwaukee, now a minority-majority city with 39% African Americans and 17% Hispanics.  How that figures into voter ID becomes obvious, certainly to any public official who can do simple math and  look around the corner. These Hispanics voters,  both born here and legalized,  often work or live in circumstances that do not require driver licenses in the same proportions as white suburbanites, which tilts those photo ID simplistics.  They survive poverty circumstances in many cases. They may share homes or have relatives who are undocumented, instilling an extra caution about intrusive  GOP sponsored investigations of honest citizens,  using nonexistent voter fraud as a legislative excuse to play politics and instill fear. 

The May Day march of 2011 underscored a growing young
Hispanic population willing to demonstrate for immigration
reform.

Apparently there was one  comment in my story that agitated the right and may have attracted the plaintiffs:

“You can already hear that particularly bigoted breed of Charlie Sykes and CRG conservatives scoff that all this (growth)  has to be the ‘illegals’ taking those valuable jobs of cleaning out cesspools or picking corn that whites born here must surely be clamoring for.

“But the statistical breakdowns reflect a quite different reality – the variety and vitality of Latinos in this state. What the census analysts describe as those with ‘Hispanic roots,’ society now recognizes as leaders in entrepreneurship, culture expansion and community building -- business owners, plant workers, housewives, production experts, legalized here or born here. Many in Milwaukee are indeed our poorer citizens, in a city that suffers staggering rates of unemployment for minorities. But simultaneously they are filling schools and churches and gaining clout. A great number of their children born in this county have now reached voting age.” 

It was a 2012 recognition that has grown in validity, reflecting a hot reality in the 2014 voter photo ID decision.

No wonder Walker wanted  voter ID in place before the November election  to cripple nature and normal expansion  --  and make it difficult for his social and intellectual opponents to vote him out.  

Frankly, my story was an infinitesimal part of the case.  I sure wish  I had access to the depth and breadth of examples of social and employment discrimination facing minorities that Adelman had.  Note how he not only drew the right conclusions but pushed  a strong dose of sanity toward those overwrought  Walker proponents:

“Given the evidence presented at trial showing that Blacks and Latinos are more likely than
whites to lack an ID, it is difficult to see how an amendment to the photo ID requirement
could remove its disproportionate racial impact and discriminatory result,” he said, asserting that there would be instant hearings before him if the legislature attempted any such abusive amendment.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, then for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran  Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he  became the newspaper’s  arts editor and then its senior feature editor. In the 1990s he was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news.

From 2002 to 2013 he ran as editor the Milwaukee Labor Press, the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, and helped create its still operative milwaukeelabor.org portal.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.

HIGH-PRICED LAWYERS FOR RIGHT HAD RANDA BUT WERE THEY JUST SNOOKERED INTO EXPANDING JOHN DOE PROBE?

By Dominique Paul Noth

Did Judge Randa fall into a honey trap
 set by US appeals panel?

It’s virtually impossible for laymen to follow the checkers game of ins and outs of the John Doe probe. Many lawyers have that same problem, and so obviously do journalists who fall back on preconceptions while much of what they do is flat guesswork. 

But one likely interpretation has been endorsed off the record by a number of legal experts familiar with the case, not discussed in the media but a hot discussion in legal circles.

It could very well be that the high-priced lawyers for the Wisconsin  Club for Growth were just sucked in to major tactical error  by the US 7th District Court of Appeals, which encouraged an oops ruling reversal  by US District Judge Rudolph T. Randa that  now allows  a broader investigation to proceed.

The entire episode may inadvertently reveal that the Club for Growth and other conservative groups’ longer goal was delay in exposing any wrongdoing rather than preventing the prosecutors from revealing wrongdoing. Because if there is anything illegal under our campaign finance laws about excessive coordination, it will come out sooner or later in any fair collection of evidence.  

But now the various decisions do allow what was probably the main political purpose of these hired guns. The results will not be unveiled in time to confirm in court anything ugly about Gov. Scott Walker before his November attempt at re-election.

This partial victory of delay may come at an enormous price.  Particularly if the public perceives that Randa tried to quash a pursuit of corruption in campaign financing based on his right-wing leanings. 

To oversimplify the sequence of events, the various rulings of Randa, whose decisions have strayed further to the right over the last decade, may have actually opened a broader geographic door previously denied the states’ district attorneys who brought the second John Doe probe. Previous, they were limited by the rules to only investigate campaign finance abuse within specific counties applying to specific residents.

Now, depending on court results, they could be open to something the lawyers who brought Randa into the case wanted to prevent – a sweeping nationwide probe of coordination with Walker’s campaign of third party money from states and residents far away. 

Most of the money raised by the groups involved for Walker came from outside Wisconsin and up to now outside the reach of state prosecutors.

Originally, the DAs,  both Republicans and Democrats, had sought to involve the state attorney general, a prominent GOP  figure, only to see him tacitly concede they had the right to investigate and yet stall for six months to join them.  J.D. Van Hollen has also decided not to run for re-election on the GOP ticket, and read into that what you will.

But the John Doe did receive broad legal permission to proceed, including a thumbs up from the Government Accountability Board, which by statute is limited in its ability to conduct criminal probes and is also beholden to Walker and the GOP dominated legislature for its board of retired judges’ terms in office. So from the start there was an effort to remove the John Doe from partisan tinge, including the appointment of a special prosecutor with noted conservative credentials.

The Wisconsin Club for Growth and other conservative groups that had raised money nationwide for Walker’s election campaigns – and this is not hyperbole but fact – went ballistic. It accused the prosecutors of invading their free speech rights by investigating their behavior, bringing up specters of Al Capone seeking to block any investigation into his tax evasion for fear it would reveal tax evasion.

A series of state court cases and appeals ensued – based on the standard cry of free speech rights and injury to political activity, always a winning soundbite and helped by past cases of prosecutorial excess  in a nation that hates criminals getting away with anything but also hates police authority. The Club’s lawyers, hoping for quick resolution by a sympathetic pet on the federal bench, Randa, asked him to halt the investigation.

Former state justice Janine Geske was among
the legal experts disturbed by sudden breadth
of  Randa's ruling.

He did that and much more in a sweeping decision May 6.  Refusing to rule on whether the prosecutors’ case was frivolous in other state court cases, he ruled they should cease and desist the John Doe and destroy the collected evidence. Both Democratic and Republican attorneys contacted expressed shock at the unprecedented broadness of a decision by a judge who once prided himself on more narrow if quite conservative rulings. 

They noted the judge created a classic Catch 22 for the prosecutors. If they didn’t destroy evidence as he ordered, they were in contempt in his court.  If they did destroy evidence, they were in contempt of state judges in ongoing cases.  Certainly his decision brought immediate national stories about Randa’s clear bias given his staffing and contacts.

The federal appeals court immediately recognized this Catch 22 and May 7 granted the emergency staying of Randa’s order. But being logical and helpful, they also drew Randa a road map on one glaring mistake, how he had to first declare the original complaint frivolous, which in his zeal (his decision now a clear error contains almost a cut-and-paste of the Club for Growth’s interpretation of the events, which is hardly the full story or even an accurate version, as a simple search of newspaper records would reveal) he had neglected to do and therefore failed in any legal way to justify his overreach.

May 8 he fell into this carefully laid trap by the federal appeals panel, two of whom were appointed by GOP presidents and quite likely reflect the majority conservative view of the full 15 member court of appeals.  He offhandedly agreed he had no right to order destruction of evidence and declared the original complaint frivolous, opening the door to broad investigation of whether it was frivolous.

Though lawyers for Club for Growth immediately crowed that this second Randa decision was extremely embarrassing for the prosecution and “a very good day for us and a very bad day for them,” the DAs involved laid low, perhaps chuckling.   In fact they may be delighted to have their reasons for the probe put under a more public spotlight.

What Randa has  unintentionally done is allow various groups of judges, state and federal, to hear testimony and information about why the pursuit is not frivolous and why prosecutors are allowed to gather evidence under previously granted legitimate court authority – something no judge has the right to throw into the river.

I’m simply an observer, not a lawyer, but it could be the expensive team assembled by Club for Growth has now misfired twice. First, by letting the case into federal court, where any approval allows the investigators to spread out into jurisdictions denied them as state prosecutors.  And second in allowing many judges in court sessions to hear the reasons why their right to search is inviolate and whether the evidence for the search is frivolous or not. Which, of course, also allows the public and journalists to get deeper clues into the reasons for the investigation free of the partisan reporting and taints that have surrounded the John Doe from the start.

It may also provide a dose of reality for partisans on both sides.  If there is a smoking gun in the violation of campaign finance laws, it will not be demonstrated in court before the November election. Voters will have to look at Walker’s actual strange track record in office to make a determination and not expect a last-minute rescue revelation in the courts.  On the other side, the right cannot crow before the election that the courts have determined he has done nothing wrong.  That decision is far far away.

The struggle now is to let an investigation proceed, so that Wisconsin doesn’t duplicate New Jersey, being blinded by partisan attitudes and political necessities and only belatedly waking up, after election, to face some horrible truths about how far politicians will stray to raise money, gain power and behave in and before achieving office.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, then for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran  Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he  became the newspaper’s  arts editor and then its senior feature editor. In the 1990s he was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news.

From 2002 to 2013 he ran as editor the Milwaukee Labor Press, the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, and helped create its still operative milwaukeelabor.org portal.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for thirdcoastdaily.

LIES AND WISCONSIN POLITICS INTERMINGLE IN ELLIS’ HASTY DEPARTURE

By Dominique Paul Noth

Ellis leaving, but with memorable full head of steam.

After putting a ham-sized fist in his mouth on video – again! –  and insulting his own Republican colleagues even as he revealed his ignorance about voting laws April 9, Wisconsin Senate President Mike Ellis had no other course two days later than to announce he would not run for re-election for Neenah area District 19. 

But the reasons he gave in radio interviews  and to reporters  actually don’t hold up (basically, "it was sure foolish but doesn’t everyone have a right to talk nonsense to a gathering in a bar?"). Such excuses speak volumes about the mendacity that the public has come to associate with politicians.

It took Gov. Scott Walker, a fellow victim of speaking too preeningly to a secret taper, to really pinpoint the hypocrisy game the public has rightly begun to hate. 

Walker says Ellis’ remarks were distressing (perhaps because they included sarcastic comments about Walker being all about Walker). But back in a notorious 2011 chat with someone he thought was billionaire David Koch, Walker was full of boasts and self-delusion about his own importance.  His ego still enlivens the hit parade on YouTube --  in two parts!   

Also that year, as the “As Goes Janesville” documentary later revealed, Walker promised a major donor on video he would push for “right to work” legislation after he got through dismantling public sector unions. The transcript is agonizingly embarrassing. 

Now with the Ellis case, Walker pronounces a new level of  caution – don’t say out loud what you personally believe.  In other words, lie more adroitly.  He has learned, he says, that anything can be on tape so be careful.  A fair paraphrase: Don’t speak in public all those ugly hopes, planning and thinking you do in private.  

At least Ellis, the Neenah Republican who has been in the legislature since 1970, openly revealed his fears and fly-by-night thought process.  He was already facing a hot and heavy state senate test against a strong campaigner, Democratic Rep. Penny Bernard Schaber.

An advertising image lost.

Everyone who has covered state politics knows his tendency to boast about his prowess off the cuff, sober or not, and he has been exposed on video again and again for such excesses. One Democratic adviser told Schaber months ago that her entire TV campaign should be showing the real Ellis on the senate podium screaming at opponents of ultra sound probes for pregnant women to sit down and shut up. 

Well, now TV won’t have Ellis to kick around anymore. The chosen GOP leader for voter regulation laws was caught on tape suggesting he should use his own fund-raiser to set up a super PAC to raise money against Schaber, even including names of the rich Republican backers (operators of Mills Fleet Farm among them) that would be solicited for money.  He had to know that the idea was illegal – the remaining court firewall is that PACs can’t openly coordinate with candidates. It’s even worse if he didn’t know since he is the senate leader on campaign laws.

In that video he went on to declare himself more important to the Senate than elected GOP leader  Scott Fitzgerald or even that other Scott, the governor.  It’s so devastating a video that there is a short version for people who can’t believe the highlights 
 and then an unedited hour-plus version to confirm the worst. 

Deception exposed him as it did Walker, this time from the right while Walker’s came from a radio trickster.  Even Democrats were glad to see Ellis destroyed but remained troubled by the motives and the source -- James O’Keefe, who claims his Project Veritas pursues corruption wherever the video cameras find it but gets money and attention from notorious hate groups of the right-wing. 

O’Keefe is a proud professional liar, pretending to be something he is not. That’s how he posed as a pimp to get video (heavily edited to fit his pre-conclusions) on ACORN, which helped shutter the national reform community organization for low income families.

In this case, the media reports, Project Veritas pretended to be the son of an Ellis supporter to capture the ugliness on tape at the Inn on the Park bar near the Capitol in Madison, a watering hole where Ellis’ tendency to let down his hair has got him into trouble before.  This is known in the media business as low-hanging fruit. It is also known as using methods that violate journalism ethics.

Among the interested listeners, though he has denied absorbing the details, was state Sen. Glenn Grothman who intends to run for Tom Petri’s US House seat grabbing the same extreme right money that Ellis offended. 

All that loose talk, combined with discussion of GOP bigwigs owning valuable  lake property,  left Ellis no recourse than to abandon the re-election race.  Now he paints himself as another “independent thinker” being pushed out by the Republican Party machinery.

 Given the source of the exposure – O’Keefe and his tactics – there seems some validation.  Ellis took the common sense course – as did several quieter Republicans, more than the media unveiled  – of opposing expanded spending for private voucher schools, which drew the wrath of the powerful lobbyists of American Federation for Children. So did opposition to  another bill close to Sen. Leah Vukmir and other Tea Party groups to gut educational Common Core standards.

So clearly there were big money forces that wanted him out, though they deny coordinating with O’Keefe. But it sure signaled that O’Keefe had a receptive right-wing audience for a stealth attack.  Ellis certainly believes, as he told Wisconsin Eye, that he was set up after multiple efforts. 

 Ellis now tries to paint himself as one of those few  honorable traditionalists  forced out by extremists, saying there was “no room on the street anymore for people to walk down the middle of the road."  But while there have been episodes of math common sense from Ellis, immediately his self-inflation was labeled as nonsense by watchers of the legislature, noting how despite his loose tongue Ellis was given the presidency because he could push  through the party line and was dismissively arrogant in his treatment of opponents.  Remember, this is the same party that elected Bill Kramer Assembly leader despite warnings about his annoying tongue and loose fingers.

Penny Bernard Schaber
 -- GOP scrambling to find
an opponent for a notable campaigner.

Madison reporters were  particularly amused when Ellis likened his work in the Senate to three others departing out of age or sadness with the tone of politics  – Tim Cullen, Bob Jauch (Democrats) and Republican Dale Schultz.  Ideology aside, they were considered true listeners and negotiators. Ellis was not.  But now he seeks to wrap himself in their aura.

Schaber took the high road saying she was sad to see Ellis leave on such a “sour note.”  But she knows the Republicans are scrambling to find an opponent to pour all the ready money into the race (there are four likely opponents already)  and knows that voucher school advocates are particularly poised to fund any opponent.  Schaber’s team laughingly admits they now have to scrap an ad campaign built around Ellis’ video blunders.

But here’s what Ellis didn’t learn and Walker pretends to have learned. Rather than seeking  better hearts and minds to occupy public office,  he needs the GOP to find candidates with tighter lips, obedience  built into their DNA and smiles that never reach the eyes.

For 10 years the author, Dominique Paul Noth, served as editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press until its demise in 2013 and continues to freelance to many publications as well as write for his own websites. A professional journalist since the 1960s he has won multiple cultural and political journalism awards and for nearly two decades was film and drama critic before serving as  senior editor at the Milwaukee Journal. His theater reviews appear at Third Coast Daily.

ABELE AND ALLIES HOPE TO LURE MILWAUKEE VOTERS INTO THEIR POWER GRAB APRIL 1

By Dominique Paul Noth

A recent column explored the basic civic duty for voters in participating in the April 1 election – but also attacked in passing how Sheldon Lubar, the Greater Milwaukee Committee and other business allies of County Executive Chris Abele are putting more than $100,000 behind marketing a one-sentence resolution that clears the field for them while sounding like cost savings. 

They can get away with this because most citizens have never read that ballot sentence (given at the end of this article) and how it doesn’t touch the existing odorous essence of Act 14.  Media commentators should be all over this deception but remain disturbingly silent on the eve of the vote.

The resolution is  actually a pretense to fool the citizenry  into thinking the common man and woman – the voters – are as important in Madison as the big bucks lobbyist machinery, which has already put most of Act 14 in place.  You’ll hear the resolution will encourage diversity on the county board, which is deeply false. The board is already brimming with “citizen legislators” representing all political stripes and colors, elected by citizens to give all 18 districts in the county responsible representation, with civility required under parliamentary rules. 

Nothing in this question promotes more good people to lend their abilities for a better county. The only people who could afford to run for office and work for pennies if the resolution passes are members and cohorts of the 1% pretending to an interest in public affairs.

It is unlikely that low turnout voters, stumbling into these issues for the first time, will prove adept enough to resist the marketing blandishments.  Many are on fixed incomes and resentful of public employees for having not much but more than they do. 

The Madison majority and their business allies are really eyeing a weaker less attentive county board and a more powerful executive from a comforting white bread background of wealth and privilege.  (Of course, if the next county executive is more attuned to raising up the ordinary working family by emphasizing living wages, more balance in growth opportunities and more public transit, then the people now backing Act 14 will be the first to scream about excessive power.  In any case, it’s not a thoughtfully worked out law.)

You’ll also hear that the salary cuts that can’t start until two years from now are speeding process (!)  in county government. That’s demonstrably not true either. The salary cuts looming in the far distance are the tip of the Act 14 iceberg that is already causing the Good Ship Democracy to founder.

Much of this enterprise is not about salary but how to use the lure of reduction to rob citizens of balanced representation and provide a lopsided insider track for the county executive and his financial allies. Madison has chopped into the economic, audit and legal oversight that has actually kept Abele out of regulatory trouble and kept the taxpayers involved in the process.

No doubt the situation before Act 14 was hardly ideal. It could frustrate both citizens in need and developers who want public land or contract approval more swiftly. But balance among the branches of local government and measured open discussion also have saved the taxpayers from throwing away their money on unproven promises. It’s belatedly rescued them, or encouraged behind the scenes negotiations rather than blunt and costly confrontation. The pace of democracy can seem snail-like, but it is a Vladimir Putin dream of autocracy to drown the baby of cooperation in the toilet. 

Supervisor Broderick sees a goldmine for
lawyers on all sides.

Cutting salaries to force part-time status  is part of this  myth of cost-saving. In actuality,   lawyers are sharpening their pencils as Act 14 paves the way for legal challenges, delays and court action, actually elevating the expense of county operations because of ethical rules about how many eyeballs from different branches of government must approve transactions.

Lawyers contacted echo that  observation. As does Supervisor Gerry Broderick, who always intended to retire in 2016 and would be unaffected by the ballot language, though he feels  the board has already been hamstrung by Act 14. 

“Huge costs for the public will unpeel like layers of an onion,” Broderick predicts.  “This is really a full employment act for lawyers.” 

The business community has pushed for Act 14 since last summer -- but not out of altruism. They are conditioned for profit opportunity, expecting quicker access to parks, transit and other contracts. But managerial acumen is different in profit-free government, just as society’s most capable “job creators” are not the people behind Act 14. If you examine these old-fashioned trade groups and their public statements, they have a quite fuzzy record on cutting-edge best practices, tight budgeting and embracing proven principles of government cooperation, particularly the report card “A” grade of “working well with others.”  So whatever the excuses,  Act 14 has become a walking exercise in divisiveness disguised as cutting through red tape. 

There are 71 other counties, many run by Republicans, that would secede from Wisconsin rather than let the Madison legislators treat them as they have been intruding on local control for the state’s only First Class City (legal definition), largest economic engine and biggest voting bloc.  But the Madison chambers, perhaps because the Democrats are still in charge,  are  always eager to stick it to Milwaukee, the subject of a dozen bills this session alone. Whether rural envy, suburban rivalry or just general ignorance of urban problems, Act 14 has emerged as Exhibit A, hastily written and stabbing in broad thrusts at the complex revenue environment. 

It tells Milwaukee’s 750,000 county residents that Big Brother knows best, that none of you are worth a full time county supervisor.  Doesn’t matter that most of these 18 supervisors put in 60 hours a week reading proposals, attending meetings, fielding neighborhood complaints, holding forums or jawing with the communities they live in.   The Madison legislature decrees this is all unnecessary and asks the voters to lower the barely reputable annual salary of $50,000 to an insulting $24,000, in effect mandating the job as part time no matter what the locals may think, need or want. It’s known as undermining the voice of the people and then blaming the people for doing it.

How they came up with $24,000 confirms the depth of the insult.  That figure is the  per capita average of everyone in Milwaukee County – nonworkers, workers, retirees and on  and on.  So no effort to raise the population out of financial doldrums, to close the gap between the haves and have-nots, just bring county elected leaders and their families down to the lowest denominator.  No discussion of worthy ideas to combine services, no forums among the many local agencies and municipalities, just broad demeaning strokes. 

Salary changes to prior law must be approved by voters, and can’t start until the next election in 2016. But even these pay cuts are a useless gesture in size in a $1.2 billion county budget, in contrast to thoughtful frugality.

The resolution deliberately wounds the younger talented public servants on the county board. They regard their jobs as a career and will never have enough money to campaign against this attack. 

There’s always natural turnover on the county board (four supervisors are likely to retire anyway in 2016). There are already three lawyers on the board thankfully willing to do double duty – and one, Patricia Jursik, has become crucial in exposing the legalistic and procedural weaknesses of Abele’s appointees.  Two current supervisors  are now lead  candidates for other public offices with more job security. A conservative board member could augment his income if he becomes mayor in Franklin, gaining $20,000 in salary and expenses.

But the majority on the board are parents with children at home, many small children, relying on their income. Most are in districts mandating full time service and devotion. Many are minorities truly representative of their communities, not offshoots from traditional family income. 

Moreover, and this must particularly gall Abele and his business allies,  the board has been quite unified in recent years, progressive in ideas, and regularly overrides Abele’s attacks on its scrutiny.  Ironically most on the board agree with many of his goals – but balance heavy-handed tactics with diplomatic outreach.  Abele is not famous for sharing toys or taking advice. Ask some of the strong managers he either fired or encouraged to leave such as Sue Black at parks and Frank Busalacchi at transportation.

You can honor business advice as he clearly does, but still admit their lobbying arms support Act 14 because they smell an opportunity to get faster hands on county park land, transit contracts and cheaper standards for contracted workers. Those pesky questions from the county board about his department picks or actual operations should actually be welcome by the exec as part of open democratic government.

A funny thing. The real harm of Act 14 is not on the ballot. It’s already been done. It changes prior laws that don’t require voter approval. So it reduced the term of an elected supervisor to two years from four.  It prevents the current board from acting against any Abele appointed department head – an action the board has rarely taken except for cause.

The county exec’s authority is increased over all county agencies and in  all contract negotiations. Where the board once had review authority, that is taken away – it must deal only with his approval. While the corporation counsel was once “required” to work with the board, now the board “may use” the counsel, a massive change in accord and representation that will spur greater hires by all sides of outside lawyers at taxpayer expense. Madison stepped in to address an ongoing counsel dispute and clearly has concocted a new one.

The talented support staff of the county board has been cut back, causing an exodus of experienced monitors and investigators. Abele’s staff and agency heads  remain largely political appointees not proven professionals. Several have never previously worked in county government.

While there used to be no statutory limit on tax levy expenses for county board operations, these are now limited to .4% of the levy. That may cripple travel but it largely cripples oversight.  The state’s own neutral legislative analysis confirms how radically Act 14 transfers authority to the exec from the board.   Of course, the board could still use its legislative power to choke the exec’s authority, but it apparently won’t be as vindictive. 

All that’s on the ballot is what the state  constitution leaves to the voters --  cuts in salaries and benefits for supervisors starting in 2016. County historians will point out that while the board has been ponderous at times,  it has also been a much needed  check and balance on the executive – in fact, major abuse, corruption and misjudgment of  county finances stemmed from the executive and his political appointees. Sometimes the board went along to the community’s detriment. Sometimes they stepped in to rectify mistakes, which is mainly what Act 14 cuts into.

New Supervisor David Bowen
 demonstrated immediate enterprise

Abele’s sense of remoteness from the needs of the community is likely to be exacerbated. The most prominent example was something freshman Supervisor David Bowen sponsored to veto proof majority -- raising the minimum wage for county employees and those working for businesses contracted by the county to $11.33 an hour. That’s hardly a fortune (most workers, especially union ones, get more), though you would think it was a fortune from the panic engendered  in Madison, Abele’s office and among business organizations. They all used the same doomsday analysis that flies in the face of actual results reported from around the nation.

Initial attack came from a bill in Madison seeking to prevent any municipality from doing better for its citizens in minimum wage if government money was involved. It was  aimed not only at existing laws that  have proved quite successful in Dane County  but quite specifically to thwart Milwaukee’s effort that could instantly benefit more than 2,000 low-paid Family Care workers. 

TV screenshot of protest in front of Abele mansion.

A handful of  level-headed Republicans blocked that move, but Abele plodded on.  He vetoed the increase, using that Walker-Lite projection of select higher tax costs five years down the road. That prompted dozens of low income workers March 13 to picket in front of his Lake Drive mansion waving shoes and encouraging him to walk in theirs. 

A few days later the board overrode his veto, citing the contrast between lip service about helping workers (a slap at Abele) and actual action (a self-compliment for standing firm).

Act 14 is emerging as yet  another example  of Abele’s distance from community needs. It seemed particularly cruel and callous legislation to cripple dedicated families to $24,000, unworthy of a nominal Democrat and dismissive of attracting quality talent to the county that might argue with him. Abele’s actions have prompted simplistic psychological analysis that only a billionaire’s son could act this way, someone unfamiliar with poverty or with the daily struggle to support a family.

That viewpoint, while clearly overwrought class analysis, is becoming harder to refute. He may give financial support to LBGT causes, international feminism and select local candidates eager to work with him.  But what counts more with citizens is the argument that he can afford such abstract gestures while the common folk who have kept charity organizations like United Way alive are doing so with dollars they can’t spare.

The rhetorical contrast is telling. Sympathy has gone over to the workers who picketed the remote figure behind the brick wall on Lake Drive and to other Abele’s critics who interpret his history at the county as trying to bully the entire sandbox. His actions don’t comfort observers who held out higher hope for him.

Since Act 14 has already done so much damage, does that  mean that a vote “no” is a waste of time? Hardly.  First it is a clear slap to the behavior of both Abele and the Madison GOP for preempting local discussion, control and quality talent.  It rebuffs the attitude of Lubar and the business community that they can buy votes, though they’ve become quite good at that.

Most pundits  expect the resolution  will sail through. If so, that is more a comment on public ignorance about the complexities in a $1.2 billion budget where property taxes don’t even cover a third of the needs. 

What Act 14 takes away is the scrupulous monitoring, the multiple eyes and rounded approval mandated in the complicated mass mixing of federal and state revenue.  Even experienced politicos can be taken for a ride by such requirements. 

Witness what just happened to Willie Hines, longtime president of the Common Council, the city equivalent of the county board.  If ever there was an astute insider of the requirements of government regulation, Hines was it. Yet when he resigned for a higher paying job with the housing authority, even Hines ran afoul of federal conflict of interest rules.  He had to resign and will probably sit for months hoping for a federal waiver.

The county budget is full of similar thickets. The Madison fashioners took a fleeting stab at trying to anticipate the complex rules, but on track record alone their perception is dubious.  The legal community and scholars of revenue monitoring expect Act 14 will cost taxpayers a bundle. So if fairness doesn’t sway voters, economic common sense should.  

The actual wording requiring intelligent citizens to vote no:

“Shall that portion of 2013 Wisconsin Act 14 which limits the compensation of members of the board of supervisors of Milwaukee County other than the chairperson of the board and chairperson of the finance committee to receipt of an annual salary of not more than the annual per capita income of this county, which in 2012 was $24,051, and which limits the compensation of the chairperson of the board to  not more than 150 percent of that amount and the chairperson of the finance committee to not more than 125 percent of that amount, subject to limitations and adjustments specified by law; and which prohibits supervisors from receiving any compensation or benefits not specifically authorized or required by law become effective in this county on April 18, 2016?”

For 10 years the author, Dominique Paul Noth, served as editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press until its demise in 2013 and continues to freelance to many publications as well as write for his own websites. A professional journalist since the 1960s he has won multiple cultural and political journalism awards and for nearly two decades was film and drama critic before serving as  senior editor at the Milwaukee Journal.

QUIET APRIL 1 MILWAUKEE BALLOT DEMEANED BY ONE SENTENCE

By Dominique Paul Noth

I spoke during the week to several citizens I regard as knowledgeable and attuned to public affairs. Not a one knew there was a statewide spring election April 1.

It’s also amazing how little attention has been paid to this quiet contest in Milwaukee County  except  for one horrible sentence – a partisan GOP invasion from Madison appealing to the voters’ crassest instincts. Otherwise,  April 1 is just the sort of benign election the citizens say they want . . . and then ignore.

To make people aware of the least typical part of the ballot --  that one sentence and its siren call to their Silas Marner instincts --  Sheldon Lubar and other business allies of County Executive Chris Abele are spending more than $100,000 to pump up attention, ignoring the central purpose of this nonpartisan spring affair.  Many other notable local figures deride Lubar’s fund-raising plea as a sham but aren’t similarly spending money on TV and radio ads to encourage a campaign for a more responsible no vote.  “We believe the Madison GOP and their allies have wasted enough money to buy the voters,” one city elected official told me.

Despite the big money push, the sensible public should vote “no” on this sentence  -- but is that likely to happen? Most people simplistically believe that any cut in salary and benefits to public workers, even their own elected representatives, has to be a good thing. They don’t get it.  (Could the Greater Milwaukee Committee be wrong?, they ask.  Could MMAC’s hired guns be motivated by something less noble that what’s good for the people?) They haven’t grasped that voting “yes” will probably cost taxpayers far more in wasted money and lost services than any puny short-term pretense of savings.

Attention to this  ballot sentence has also pulled  April 1 away from its nonpartisan purpose. The spring election should remain built around dedicated local service, normal turnover in office and essential judicial and neighborhood oversight.

Granted, in the years when the spring elections drew high turnout, even the judicial races  could swim in ideological dog whistles. But this year the choices are fortunately  based on civic duty not Pavlovian howls. It’s what we say we want from elections – decent committed public servants without personality bickering, Neanderthal attitudes and partisan gridlock. Yet we only go to the polls in big numbers when there’s lots of that bickering and insulting sound-bites.  That’s why everyone expects the turnout this April 1 to be dismal, just as they regard the only salvation for the state in November to be presidential-year-like high turnout to restore Wisconsin to long-lost comity.

The countywide people races involve a couple of respectable judicial newcomers. There’s also a couple of suburban mayoral contests (Franklin and South Milwaukee) and something residents of city District 15 in the heart of Milwaukee don’t even know – April 1 is their primary to choose among the five names on the ballot and a couple of more write-in hopefuls to come down to the two runoff survivors to replace Willie Hines on the Common Council April 18.

My next article will expose in depth the horrors of that lousy  ballot sentence -- and I mean lousy, both in intention and grammatical construction; I doubt even Meryl Streep could read it aloud intelligently  (check it out yourself at the end of the article).  It’s time the public explored the underlying realities of Act 14 that are not on the ballot and that voters can only correct in November with a new Madison legislature and governor.

But for now let’s deal with the nicer stuff, rather than wallow in the shameful intrusion.

All county voters should be happy they have two mature nonpartisan candidates to pick from for Milwaukee Circuit Court Branch 32. Both have served as court commissioners, sort of mini-judges for small claims and family disputes. 

Laura Gramling Perez,
preferred candidate for judge

My personal nod goes to the most experienced (senior commissioner) and personable candidate, Laura Gramling Perez, and not just because my kids went to the same high school, Rufus King; her sister played soccer with my daughter; her brother is a good friend of one of my sons, and her parents, retired municipal judge Jim Gramling and lawyer Susan Gramling, are longtime acquaintances.  (Though that knowledge of the family commitment to public service sure helps.)

But, as strangers now meeting her can attest, she is also proving the most approachable and articulate candidate (both competitors keep crossing paths at public gatherings).  Laura Gramling Perez has also been endorsed by the broadest coalition of legal minds I respect.  The clincher is her casual act of conscience that too much of the media has been using as a negative. She signed a recall petition against Gov. Scott Walker for all the right reasons of concern for good government and more money for education.   A simple act of citizenship is being used against her.

Her opponent is also respected and quite likeable with a similar philosophical bent. I’ve met Cedric Cornwall several times.  In their forums and literature they share similar legal values and concern for an honest rounded voice for the community. No matter who becomes the new judge, no one has reason to throw a snit fit.

Unopposed Janet Protasiewicz destined
for county bench

The other new judge will fill a seat vacated by the early retirement of Charles Kahn – and I wrote about how the county dodged a partisan bullet in the race for Milwaukee County Circuit Court Branch 24 and why the new judge will be the unopposed Janet Protasiewicz.

Protasiewicz is actually a highly regarded middle of the road prosecutor who lives in Franklin. None of the other candidates solicited last November-December to face her this time by the Scott Walker money machine could find any reason to take her on. 

None of these contests will inspire high turnout, though involved citizenship should. Perhaps the emerging advertising blitz will fool more of the public to participate for the wrong reasons. But let’s not confuse slick marketing with intelligent government. Just start asking why the establishment business community is so eager to get the voters to ignore the civic purpose of April 1 and focus on one sentence -- and the one resolution that allows them greater speed in getting their hands on county land such as parks, on county contracts with private companies and on quicker dispersal of county-owned assets. 

Car dealers call it “looking under the hood.” If voters do, pundit applecarts will be overturned by the sound of a resounding “no.”

More next column, but for now just weigh the sentence no one knows and why voters should oppose its blatant attempt to unbalance representative democracy.

“Shall that portion of 2013 Wisconsin Act 14 which limits the compensation of members of the board of supervisors of Milwaukee County other than the chairperson of the board and chairperson of the finance committee to receipt of an annual salary of not more than the annual per capita income of this county, which in 2012 was $24,051, and which limits the compensation of the chairperson of the board to  not more than 150 percent of that amount and the chairperson of the finance committee to not more than 125 percent of that amount, subject to limitations and adjustments specified by law; and which prohibits supervisors from receiving any compensation or benefits not specifically authorized or required by law become effective in this county on April 18, 2016?”

For 10 years the author, Dominique Paul Noth, served as editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press until its demise in 2013 and continues to freelance to many publications as well as write for his own websites. A professional journalist since the 1960s he has won multiple cultural and political journalism awards and for nearly two decades was film and drama critic before serving as senior editor at the Milwaukee Journal.

LOSING FAITH WITH GOP IN MADISON

Photos throughout article
By Dominique Paul Noth

On March 11, I attended a Lenten service. It was supposed to be about untying those emotional knots that block natural empathy to our fellow humans, not the similar political knots strangling our state. But, forgive me, Lord, it is hard to keep those separate.

During the service, a friend recounted her experience with a mother of young children who, despite her impoverished circumstances, was willing to help out at a Saturday food pantry. Afterward, the friend offered to drive the mother home with two sacks of groceries, rather than seeing her and one young son struggle with such burdens on foot for 30 blocks.

On the drive the friend learned firsthand about the mother’s escape from an abusive relationship and the fight to raise several small children after being evicted from her home. Then she saw firsthand the mother’s walkup apartment, its gloomy stairway, its tiny kitchen with no stove, the refrigerator with a door hanging off the hinge.

At least the hinge matched the broken door to the bathroom. Inside, the tub was filled with laundry. The drying laundry was hanging in a living room barren of any furniture. Three young children emerged from the bedroom squealing with delight to see mother and the visitor. 

We all feel a psychological mix when faced with poor broken families – compassion versus the desire to flee lest the contagion of poverty affect us. That desire to flee lost out this time to finding a way to talk with and support the mother and children.

I suppose in Madison the dominating legislators would describe the visitor as having made the wrong choice. Given the legislative bills they are rushing through, they would say she should have rebuked the mother for accepting a hand up rather than toughening up to the demands of the marketplace and contemporary living. She should have told the abused mother  just shake off the consequences, shape up and not act the victim – in other words, don’t tell your story, just pretend it never happened.  They might bend because the help was from volunteers but they certainly would stiffen their attitude if the government dared display such compassion, though it clearly can do far more to help.

These dominating rulers, I fear, would not understand that such poverty --  such a fight for her children’s education, such combat against the diseases lurking in neglected buildings -- has grown far beyond one family into thousands of state families. It has become all too typical and shameful in the richest nation in the world. Nor would the rulers confess that their policies – deliberately concocting “losers” in the free market system -- bear any blame for the growing desperation in rural and urban Wisconsin, now affecting so many who, not through lack of desire, lack opportunity to find a living wage or a helping hand.

We would all like to push this suffering away from us and just hide in church on Sunday, rather than admit to empathy and guilt. But the failures are happening right here and growing. It is not in some Third World far away or affecting children caught in the wars of Syria and Africa. 

Sen. Carpenter was slapped down for
questioning Lazich’s lack of inclusion.

Pushing it all away does seem the current ideological defense dominating Madison. Why, they would probably ask there, didn’t this visitor from the food pantry give the mother a stern lecture about the opportunities of the free market?  Why focus on some idiotic Lenten message of mutual sorrow?  How dare she worry that unthinking policies and selfish behavior had anything to do with the problem? It is that sort of attitude of indifference that led Democratic Sen. Tim Carpenter to recently call out GOP Sen. Mary Lazich for a divisive election bill (while she quickly accused him of being racist before he finished his inquiry into just whom she “hated.”)

And it was assuredly the air of superiority that bothered so many when GOP Sen. Leah Vukmir, caught on tape, asked the hundreds of school professionals, crowding into the state Capitol to speak on behalf of students, how many were being paid by the taxpayers to be there (most were on their own dime) as if she couldn’t understand anything but wages driving such concern for children.

The visitor telling her story at services certainly failed the message that would have come from such elected officials as Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, economic leader in the House, nominal Catholic and physical fitness buff. He could have cribbed another story that it would have been better to put the donated food in a brown paper bag so the children would  feel their mother really loved them enough to make them lunch, rather than relying on the charity of strangers or the policies of a  caring government.

Eloise Anderson at a 2012 Milwaukee hearing
with angry inner city child care workers.

Of course, it did turn out that Ryan’s brown paper bag story was a fabrication and that the message he drove home at CPAC (the annual Conservative Political Action Conference) was an even more insulting  fabrication --  that the brown paper bag tale  pinpointed the difference between economic self-reliance and government handouts. He said the paper bag sadness was told directly by a child who disliked free federal school lunches to Eloise Anderson, Scott Walker’s secretary of health and human services. She recounted it as happening to her at a congressional hearing run by Ryan.  Eloise Anderson has now confessed (it’s good for the soul) to cribbing the story from a book actually written years earlier by an advocate for free federal school lunches and having nothing to do with any of that ideological hypocrisy. 

Anderson, whom I have covered in the past, is also famous for nuggets of advice to poor women, such as the best way to get out of poverty was to marry well, or to give up child care for jobs in manufacturing, which are hardly abundant under the Walker administration.

(Can I call Ryan a plagiarist? What is the term for cribbing a story from someone who cribbed the story and both passing it along as genuine with a false message?  It certainly fit right into the Rand Paul book of plagiarism to impress libertarians and right wingers at CPAC.  There must be some word for this in the English language other than “nonsense.”)

At least the same day I was attending the Lenten service about compassion, Gov. Walker, the son of a preacher and former Eagle Scout, did explain to the press the most pressing issue facing the state, so pressing that he wants to call back at taxpayer expense a special session of the legislature to make his most pressing law take effect before he faces an election in November.

Democrats gathered March 7 in support of Mary Burke
 at Ambassador Hotel. From left: Supervisor David Bowen,
city treasurer Spencer Coggs, US Rep. Gwen Moore,
 Burke and state Rep. Mandela Barnes.

Could that pressing issue finally be jobs?  Well, no.  Of course, Walker went way overboard in his campaign promise in 2010 of creating 250,000 jobs in four years.  But all campaigning politicians go overboard, though few ride such jackasses so long and hard. He believes in a free market and surely knows that a governor doesn’t create jobs, just the atmosphere to create jobs, like his likely opponent Mary Burke did from 2005-2007 when she was the state’s secretary of commerce. 

At this point under real math, Walker is falling probably 170,000 short of that job promise though he makes it sound a bit closer by madly counting every gain he’s not responsible for. Economists credit the general rise in the national economy (sshhh, under someone named Obama, whom Walker never dare mention). Yet even with his inflated job numbers, Wisconsin still lags its immediate neighbors and the national average badly, just as its combination of taxes and fees lay unmovingly in the nation’s middle range.

No, it can’t be jobs that are so pressing, because Wisconsin keeps shedding jobs– American TV gone, Tramont closing, Hutchinson dropping 140 and so forth. The states that are gaining in economy are mixing tax policies with civic, transit, education and cultural improvements and actual ability as administrators, something other governors can lay claim to in both parties.

Leah Vukmir with her frequent bill writer,
Scott Walker.

Walker speaks a glib game, promising a tax cut after the election by accepting as certainty a higher level of tax revenue than first predicted.  So he takes $1 billion from education, but now adds back a few million and looks for praise. That IS glib.  But if that’s deceptive, we should discuss the transit bottleneck that his policies have created, the hiring ineptitudes, the accusations of fraud at his commerce agency, the continuing John Doe probe he wants to put away before more supporters go to jail.  He has tons of campaign money, but now those mysterious rich outsiders are desperate to stall the John Doe investigation until after November. It’s as if Al Capone, sued for tax evasion, countersued the government for investigating his guilt.

No, at least Walker in the Lenten season has identified the most pressing issue facing the state. It is putting a restrictive voter photo ID law in place before his November contest against Burke, though similar hasty laws have generally been declared unconstitutional in courts around the nation and though there is no evidence of the sort of voter fraud the law addresses.

But court action takes time. So just like the attempts to block the John Doe probe seem mainly a delaying tactic to make sure nothing comes out before November, perhaps Walker is hoping that a voter ID law can’t be challenged successfully before November if the legislature is foolish enough to go along (they already restricted weekend voting).  Or could this just be a warning shot aimed at conservative state justice Patricia Roggensack, who has expressed reservations about the way his first voter ID bill was written?

It all does suggest that Walker has calculated the nonpresidential year turnout. The 60,000 or so poor, student, minority, disabled and elderly voters who will find the costs, rules,  time and inconvenience too enormous to overcome  -- well they might spell the  difference between loss and victory, so tight has the race already become (tied in latest GOP-leaning poll).

Now there are some residents, clinging to the myth of tax cuts rather than the reality of bigger potholes and slower service, not yet convinced that Walker is all about getting elected again and single-minded to that goal rather than caring anything about them.  So far nothing has changed their minds – not those embarrassing emails revealing his shallowness, nor those weird bills attacking local authority, nor his cuts in education, nor the attacks on local taxpayer flexibility.

How about today? The governor proclaims the state’s most urgent need is solving an invisible problem by limiting poll access to likely opponents of his policies in the nick of time to help him get re-elected. Voter photo ID, to quote him, is “the only real thing I thought that was pressing.”

Is the emperor that arrogant or just that naked in his desire for new clothes in the presidential contest of 2016? Of all the problems the state is facing, that is it?  

He announced it during Lent, a time for reflection. So reflect.

For 10 years the author, Dominique Paul Noth, served as editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press until its demise in 2013 and continues to freelance to many publications as well as write for his own websites. A professional journalist since the 1960s he has won multiple cultural and political journalism awards and for nearly two decades was film and drama critic before serving as  senior editor at the Milwaukee Journal.