Blogging Blue

Let me preface this entry by noting that Chris (a.k.a. capper) over at Cognitive Dissidence has a much more personal - and much more powerful - blog entry about this same subject. I’d encourage you all to visit CD and read for yourselves.

For years, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has touted the fact that he hasn’t raised property taxes, and he’s also worked hard to reduce the size of Milwaukee County government, leaving vacant or eliminating county jobs wherever and whenever possible. Now I have a confession to make: despite being a liberal, I wholeheartedly support streamlining government, whether on the local, county, state, or federal level, because I think government works best for the people when it’s lean and efficient, not bloated and wasteful. However, I don’t support the belief that so many conservatives holds that any cut to government spending/staffing is a good cut, especially when it comes to social service programs. Case in point would be the chronic short staffing at the public assistance call center operated by Milwaukee County. For more than a year that chronic short staffing, which was the result of efforts by Scott Walker to privatize the call center, has led to thousands of unanswered calls from poor residents on applying for or renewing food and child care aid. As a result of the poor performance of the call center, the state is considering withholding aid for programs that would help the poor, disabled, and elderly (emphasis mine):

Milwaukee County officials are pleading with the state not to trim major contracts for programs that help the poor, elderly and disabled.

State leaders say bungling by the county in running its public assistance call center and food share program put them on alert and led to a denial of a related $2.4 million job training grant. The state also is considering shifting at least part of the contract for operating an expanded Family Care program to a private vendor. The program provides community-based services to seniors and people with disabilities.

These possible cuts in state aid to the county - cuts which will no doubt affect thousands of individuals and families across Milwaukee County - they’re the real cost of trying to cut spending just for the sake of cutting spending. Scott Walker ought to be ashamed of himself for jeopardizing much-needed aid to Milwaukee County - and punishing residents in the process - just so he can score cheap political points in advance of his gubernatorial run in 2010.

Dan Cody has more as well.

Apparently, Mark Belling seems to think he’s a savvy political prognosticator. In an opinion piece Belling wrote at GM Today Belling predicts Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker will be a force to be reckoned with once the 2010 gubernatorial election rolls around:

Walker’s fiscal responsibility message will be especially powerful in 2010 if, as expected, the Democrats deal with a massive state budget deficit by passing monster tax hikes. He is a political nightmare for the Democrats.

Interestingly enough, back in 2005 Belling predicted Walker would crush Mark Green in the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2006, a prediction which never came close to coming true. As Xoff points out over at Uppity Wisconsin, Belling also predicted Russ Darrow would be the Republican Party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate race against Russ Feingold, and we all know how that turned out. Belling’s no Nostradamus, and instead of trying to play political prognosticator, he should stick to something he’s good at - like hurling racial epithets from the safety and comfort of the WISN studios.

Xoff has more here and here.

Perennial gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker, Milwaukee’s ever so capable County Executive, is making the rounds at the Republican Governor’s Association meeting in Miami, Florida:

Potential gubernatorial candidates making the RGA rounds in Miami:

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell (2009)

Sen. Sam Brownback (Kansas)

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (California)

Former representative and OMB chief Rob Portman (Ohio)

Former Pennsylvania US Attorney Patrick Meehan

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox

South Dakota Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Michigan)

Alabama Treasurer Kay Ivey

Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land

Wyoming Auditor Rita Meyer

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters (Arizona)

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker (Wisconsin)

I just hope Walker’s not spending time in Miami on the taxpayers’ dime. What’s more, shouldn’t Walker be spending a little more time in Milwaukee County dealing with a budget mess and doing his job?

So let me get this right. Our economy has taken a nose dive and the quality of services provided by the county continues to decline, yet County Executive Scott Walker wants to give his chief of staff a 26% pay raise:

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker wants a 26% pay raise for his chief of staff, former Ald. Tom Nardelli, while bypassing traditional County Board approval in quietly issuing large pay raises over the summer to several other top aides.

Nardelli would get the biggest pay increase of top-tier county officials, a nearly $20,000 raise to $95,000 a year. Seven county administrators also scored increases of up to 12.5%.

What I’d love to know is what Tom Nardelli’s done to deserve a 26% pay raise. After all, unless I’m mistaken, most rank and file county workers get a one or two percent raise every year, so what’s Tom Nardelli done to deserve a whopping 26% boost in his salary?

Capper and James Rowen have more.

When are these folks going to get it right?

Understaffing in Milwaukee County’s procurement office has left it vulnerable to inside rip-offs, a new audit report says.

Budget cuts shrank the staff by more than 50% between 2003 and 2007, leading to shoddy recordkeeping, poor training and corner-cutting, the report from County Auditor Jerome Heer states.

Most notably, a policy change in 2003 allowed buyers to make purchases of any amount without any management oversight, the report says.

“We were just lucky somebody didn’t exploit the vulnerability,” Heer said Wednesday. The office oversees about $50 million in county purchases annually.

So I can’t help but wonder, does dumb luck count as a management style? After all, it’s thanks to dumb luck that the county has avoided being ripped off due to staffing cuts, poor training, and corner-cutting. I’m also left to wonder if this is really the kind of County government Scott Walker is proud to manage. I know he’s pushed hard to decrease the size of county government, but at what cost? Some cuts just shouldn’t be made, and cutting the ability of the county government to provide oversight and prevent wasteful or inappropriate spending shouldn’t be something we strive for.

Perhaps if Scott Walker spent more time managing Milwaukee County and less time getting his gubernatorial campaign up and running, this kind of problem wouldn’t be happening.

Being a former employee at the Milwaukee County House of Correction, I try to keep up with the latest news and happenings from that particular institution, so imagine my surprise when I opened today’s paper and saw an article about an inmate from the HOC who’s being charged with first-degree reckless homicide after being accused of supplying another inmate with prescription methadone pills, causing that inmate’s death. What’s most disturbing to me, at least at first glance, is the fact that the HOC wasn’t even licensed to distribute methadone to treat heroin withdrawal:

Methadone is frequently used to treat pain and as a non-addictive substitute to help wean heroin addicts off that drug. The House of Correction is not licensed to treat heroin withdrawal with methadone, according to the criminal complaint. It wasn’t immediately clear why Fitzpatrick was getting the methadone, but according to the complaint, he had been getting 14 pills twice a day from the medical dispensary. He traded an unspecified number of the pills to Orlowski for snack chips from the House of Correction commissary, the complaint says.

While it’s obvious to me internal House of Corrections policies regarding prescribed medications are largely to blame, both for continuing to give an inmate methadone despite not being licensed to do so and also for allowing the inmate to hoard his methadone for weeks at a time. However, I can already see who Scott Walker and HOC Superintendent Ron Malone are going to blame, in order to deflect blame away from themselves:

Attempts to revive Orlowski about 6 a.m. were unsuccessful, the criminal complaint says. A correctional officer checked on Orlowski at 4 a.m., when he was snoring loudly, and last checked on him at 5:25 a.m., the complaint says.

The Orlowski family claim says that correctional officers “refused to look at or check up” on Orlowski early that morning despite repeated pleas by other inmates.

If you’d like to read more on the foibles and follies at the Milwaukee County House of Corrections, check out a series of excellent blog entries by capper over at folkbum’s, or feel free to check out my archive.

Just last week, Other Side came under fire for posting side by side pictures of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and Adolf Hitler, and while he had a reasonable explanation for posting those pictures, he still came under fire for his use of a photo of Adolf Hitler. Predictably, conservatives voiced some of the strongest opinions on the issue, and so I wonder if those same folks will now focus their outrage on Kevin Fischer.

See, last weekend Fischer spent some time blogging about the Wisconsin DNR, and here’s what he had to say:

The Wisconsin wing of the Nazi Party, the DNR did get involved. (“Now we’re getting somewhere” thought the litigious mob).

Fischer - who by the way doesn’t look nearly as corpulent on television as he does in the photo posted on his blog - doesn’t seem to think it’s in poor taste to compare entire state agencies - and by default those folks who work at said agencies - to Nazi, which I find to be curious, given the fact that the Nazis were responsible for killing millions of Jews, while all the DNR has done to warrant a Fischer comparison to Nazis seems to be the approval of a permit for a waterpark.

So where’s the outrage from folks on the right? It’s been a little over a week, and yet not one conservative that I’ve seen has called Fischer to task for his comparison.

Edit: Michael Mathias over at Pundit Nation, James Rowen at The Political Environment, and capper over at Whallah! have more on this story.

First of all, there’ll be no gnashing of teeth or whining here.

Am I disappointed in how things turned out last night? Hell yes, but such is politics. Sometimes your side wins and sometimes they lose; that’s just the reality of our political system.

While I’ve made no effort to hide my dislike for Scott Walker and the job he’s done as Milwaukee County Executive, I wasn’t terribly surprised he won, because Lena Taylor ran one of the worst campaigns I’ve witnessed since I became interested in politics. At times she seemed disinterested, and at others she seemed clueless, and I can’t help but wonder if she was really the best liberal candidate out there to run against Scott Walker.

And sure, I’m disappointed Louis Butler lost to Michael Gableman, but my disappointment has less to do with Gableman’s ideology - though I do disagree with his judicial philosophy, to the extent that he has one - and more to do with the kind of negative and unethical campaign he ran.

While last night had its share of disappointment, there were also some positives. The “Frankenveto” is no more, and that’s definitely a good thing. The “Frankenveto” allowed for tremendous abuses by Republican and Democratic governors alike, and I for one am glad to see it go. Besides, our governor will still have some of the broadest veto powers in the nation without the “Frankenveto.” Another high point was the re-election of Lisa Neubauer to a full term on Wisconsin’s Second District Court of Appeals, defeating newly conservative wannabe Bill Gleisner.

Closer to home, I’m glad to see Pat Jursik won a full four year term on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors without any opposition, and I was happy to see Tom Zepecki elected to another term as South Milwaukee’s mayor. Pat and Tom have done well during their time in office, and they definitely deserved another term in office.

On the eve of Wisconsin’s spring election day, I’m going to make a few picks.

Wisconsin Supreme Court: This is a no brainer. Michael Gableman has run one of the most disgustingly vile and dishonest campaigns in as long as I can remember, and in doing so he’s exposed himself as supremely unqualified and unfit to sit on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. Louis Butler has shown himself to be a more than capable jurist, and he deserves a full term on the Supreme Court.

Milwaukee County Executive: There’s no denying Lena Taylor has run a poor campaign, but putting aside the quality of her campaign, she’s the only reasonable choice for Milwaukee County Executive. Scott Walker’s had plenty of time to deliver on campaign promises past and present, and I daresay his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive will be remembered as one of broken promises and incompetence.

Milwaukee County Supervisor, District 8: Pat Jursik is running unopposed, and for good reason. She’s done a good job in her short tenure as Supervisor for the 8th District, and she deserves a full four year term.

Veto Referendum: I’m voting yes. Wisconsin’s “Frankenveto” has been abused by Democrats and Republicans alike, and even if the referendum passes, our governor will still have some of the broadest veto powers of any governor in the United States.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court: Both Rebecca Dallet and Jeffrey Norman seem qualified, but having met and spoken with Rebecca Dallet, I believe she has the temperment and smarts to be an asset to Milwaukee County on the Circuit Court.

If I remember correctly, Scott Walker was elected to serve as County Executive largely on the promise he’d rectify the scandal-ridden quagmire that had become the county’s pension system.

And yet, all these years later, we’re still hearing tales about a stunning lack of oversight over the county’s pension system:

Milwaukee County pension officials say they mistakenly overpaid former House of Correction superintendent Richard Cox and will seek a refund of more than $100,000 - one of 115 newly discovered pension payout errors.

The disclosure comes in a new filing with the IRS that admits numerous systemic mistakes caused pension overpayments and underpayments from 1994 through the present. The county is seeking refunds in some cases.

Necessary reviews of payouts were left undone and the county’s own pension laws were not followed in the various cases, says the IRS “voluntary correction” filing. It comes nine months after a Journal Sentinel investigation of county “buyback” pension benefits prompted a similar admission to the IRS.

…

The total price tag on the mistakes has not been determined, but could approach $1 million including pensioners’ and the county’s liability, according to estimates based on the county’s filing.

So let’s recap:

• 115 newly discovered pension payout errors? Thank you, Scott Walker!
• Laws not being followed? Thank you, Scott Walker!
• Liability approaching one million dollars? Thank you, Scott Walker!
• General lack of oversight over Milwaukee County’s pension system, despite promises to clean things up? Thank you, Scott Walker!

Scott Walker’s failure to clean up and fix Milwaukee County’s pension system is just another in a long line of promises he’s broken, and that’s why it’s time for new leadership for Milwaukee County.