Certainly by now you have read any number of articles about the involvement of lobbyists in the development of Assembly Bill 85 ~ you know the one ~ the one that Representative Joe Sanfelippo introduced in Madison to reform Milwaukee County government.
From Daniel Bice at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Newly released drafting documents from the Legislative Reference Bureau document the efforts of two lobbyists for GMC’s political arm, Smart Government Inc.
“Please review this draft carefully to ensure that it meets your intent,” wrote Marc E. Shovers, managing editor for the reference bureau. “As I discussed with Josh (Hoisington)and Ray Carey, I did not incorporate into this draft (of the bill) some of the requirements for a county executive that apply to Cuyahoga County because they seem to have no legal effect.”What’s important here is not that someone wants the bill to be modeled after some Ohio county government.
Instead, the legislative staffer is consulting on the measure with Ray Carey, a lobbyist for the silk-stocking firm Foley & Lardner who has been retained by Smart Government. Hoisington is Sanfelippo’s legislative aide.
Carey’s cell is listed on another page of drafting notes.
Finally, the file documents a March 6 meeting in the office of Sen. Alberta Darling (River Hills), the lead sponsor of the bill in the Senate. The page includes notes on a line-by-line draft of the legislation.
Senator Alberta Darling by the way, introduced the identical bill as Senate Bill 95.
From our friend Capper at Cognitive Dissidence:
…Sanfelippo is merely a sockpuppet for the Greater Milwaukee Committee, whose lobbyists and lawyers were the driving force behind the bill:
And from Cory Liebmann Eye On Wisconsin:
Earlier this week we found out that the Greater Milwaukee Committee’s lobbyists were literally in the room helping write Rep. Joe Sanfelippo’s legislation to undermine the Milwaukee County Board (AB 85). Most people that were paying attention expected as much but Dan Bice’s column verified those strong suspicions and provided us with actual documents to prove it.
When I reacted to the news that GMC’s lobbyists were in the room helping write the legislation, I compared it to a very similar incident that blew up in 2006. That was the time that some of the very same players and interests were busy writing secret legislation to by-pass county officials and even county voters. That legislation involved lifting a very successful Milwaukee County asset and suddenly making it a regional entity. They were plotting and planning for years behind the scenes to accomplish their goal without input from local/county leaders, any real stake holders or even the public.
Well, that’s all well and good…except for the fact that since Mr. Bice’s column, Rep. Sanfelippo, in a number of public forums, has claimed full responsibility for authorship of the bill.
Rep. Sanfelippo was adamant during the listening session concerning AB 85, hosted by County Supervisor Patricia Jursik in South Milwaukee, where the very first question from the public was: did ALEC write this bill? Rep. Sanfelippo said that ALEC had nothing to do with it, it’s mine! I wrote it.
But he didn’t write it and here’s why: not two minutes later a question about the proposed referendum and the salary restriction for supervisors at the current annual per capita income of Milwaukee County (currently about $24,000) provided his downfall. Now this is the keystone of AB 85, Rep. Sanfelippo’s pride and joy…and the center piece of the referendum he wants on April 1, 2014. Part of the question was…what is meant by annual per capita income.The questioner didn’t know, Supervisor Lipscomb (who was providing counterpoint) didn’t know and made a very bad and very wrong guess, and Rep. Sanfelippo DIDN’T KNOW! The keystone of his legislation and he doesn’t know how to define the main metric in his bill? He didn’t write the thing! No way in hell!
It is totally embarrassing that we had three elected officials on stage and a half dozen others in the audience and nobody stepped forward to provide the definition of per capita income.
btw: according to Wikipedia, per capita income is: Per capita income, more simply known as income per person, is the mean income within an economic aggregate such as a country or city. It is calculated by taking a measure of all sources of income in the aggregate (such as GDP or Gross national income) and dividing it by the total population.
Supervisor Lipscomb and Representative Sanfelippo left the audience with the impression that it was determined by the number of wage earning age residents of the county…if that were true the amount would be far higher than $24,000!
And Representative Joe Sanfelippo didn’t write Assembly Bill 85!
Recent Comments