AFSCME District Council 48 Newsletter Page

Workers
Serving
Milwaukee

MORE FUN AND GAMES
AT THE COUNTY BOARD
    Well, you have to have a sense of humor about Milwaukee politics, particularly when it comes to Milwaukee County elections after a year full of community uproar over the pension issue, accompanied by a fair size of myths and misstatements as the issues unfolded.
     One source of humor is the unusual coalition that combined in a choice of new chairman of the County Board in September.
    So concerned were supervisors about having an "open process" in the selection of the chair that they actually chose a process that required some pretty strange mental gymnastics and deal-making. The end result was that the final choice was elected by partnership between the newest supervisors (those elected by recall supporters) and by the African American supervisors on the board, who were voting as a bloc despite distinct differences on many of the issues. These black supervisors have also raised the most concerns about reducing the size of the board because of its impact on constituent representation, while the new supervisors who embraced the recall movement had, many thought, scant interest in backing anyone who had supported that pension.
    That, you would have thought, would have turned them to Robert Krug in the chairman's race. Except that Krug is also considered by Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG), the original recall organizing group, as the supervisor most likely to ask hard questions about the plans of new County Executive Scott Walker. Behind the scenes, the CRG leaders were working on many of the new supervisors to resist Krug.
     The upshot was that this unusual alliance provided enough votes to elect Lee Holloway as the new chairman. He becomes the first minority chairman of the board, and actually the supervisor who warned Walker early to show respect to the board or get "spanked."
    A further amusement: Holloway, who had already seen failed efforts to recall him, is facing another one. Petitions with about 1,600 signatures, 2,000 more than are necessary if they are found valid, have been turned in against him Sept. 10, making a recall election likely in his 5th District.
    Holloway has been defiantly tough on these recall efforts. A 10 year veteran of the county board, he turned the tables on the recall organizers who first tried and failed to recall him, pointing out sufficient serious irregularities in their petition campaign and suggesting that some of the petition circulators should be investigated for fraud.
    There have been failed recall efforts as well -- against Sheila Aldrich (4th District), Thomas Bailey (the signers failed twice in the 25th District), Lori Lutzka (17th District), Elizabeth Coggs-Jones (10th District, failed twice), Jim Schmitt (20th District, failed twice) and John Weishan. You may also note that as the recall elections have unfolded, the strength of the original recall campaigners has dissipated as they have been able to muster fewer and fewer votes in opposition to incumbents. They have certainly succeeded in replacing nearly a fourth of the County Board, but in each election the margin has been less and less and on Sept. 10 their candidate in the 1st District race against Supervisor James White actually came in third.
    In some cases, replacing the incumbents made a lot of sense. In others, maybe not. Part of this diminishing returns, though, may be that the public is perceiving that the issues in these elections are not as simple as they originally believed. And part is that we may all be electioned out by recalls that have extended past the September primary, proably will extend past the November general election and could extend further. It raises the vision of recall elections extending to the crack of doom. And all those recently elected are filling terms that expire in 2004, when every district gets to do it all over again.

Go here for columns by Pete Swinford including recent successes in bringing school bus drivers into our union.

How to contact City Aldermen, County Supervisors and Milwaukee-area state legislators.

A Death in the Family
    "Tiny" was one of those reverse nicknames. Because "Tiny" Wells was actually a big friendly guy who always had a supportive word and a friendly hello in the three decades he worked for AFSCME's Wisconsin community. Tiny looms large indeed in the recollections of his co-workers and friends.
     Arthur R. (Tiny) Wells, age 79, passed away March 24 in the Fitchburg HospiceCare Center. District Council 48 members and staff join his family in both sadness and in fondest recollections of his influence. "He was a genuinely sweet guy," one Milwaukee friend recalled. "He always made you feel better," said another.
     Born in Manitowoc in 1922, Wells went to work in the 1940s as a welder at Manitowoc Shipbuilding, where he first became interested in labor organizing. A committed trade unionist, he was hired in 1956 as staff representative by AFSCME Council 40, a job that took him regularly to Eau Claire and Manitowoc as well as Madison.
     He was appointed AFSCME area director for the state in 1972 and was a frequent visitor to Milwaukee and a constant presence at PEOPLES conventions and other gatherings. He retired in 1984 and moved with his third wife, Peggy, to Arizona, but returned to Madison two years ago.
     If you want to help honor Tiny Wells, the family has encouraged contributions in his name to the Council 40 Memorial Scholarship Fund, 8033 Excelsior Drive, Suite B, Madison, WI 53717.

THE VOTERS SPEAK:
7 NEW SUPERVISORS
. . . AND COUNTING

    The "old lefty" kicked special interests to the curb and an incumbent almost turned the tide in the two County Board elections held July 16.
    Gerry Broderick, who had heard himself constantly derided as an "old lefty" by Charles Sykes and his conservative talk show toadies, kept his focus on independent principles and grassroots organizing in the 3rd District to take a 52% to 48% victory over Mark Goff, who had sought support from the recall advocates. In the 6th District, incumbent Jim McGuigan also stuck to his guns and for the first time proved a sitting supervisor could make the race close. He lost to petition organizer Rob McDonald 53% to 47%.
    The percentages, however, do not reflect how tight these races proved to be, though they do reflect the continuing curious mixture of apathy and incumbent distaste among voters. The community doesn't seem to be getting too excited about who their supervisors are beyond the "kick out anybody who voted for the pension" mantra. Our story on Karen Ordinans' neck and neck race (see column at right) suggests that might be changing, but not dynamically. Part of it may be the summer, part of it vacations, part of it the naive belief that ousting sitting supervisors is automatically a turn for the better.
     Thinking along those lines, many on the East Side feared that voters wouldn't much care on drawing distinctions between the two candidates in the 3rd District after incumbent Penny Podell failed to make the runoff. That concern was compounded by the lack of media coverage of the one supervisor race in which "throw the incumbent out" was no longer a factor.
     Indeed, the poor voter turnout in that original primary increased -- about 3,555 voters the first time around to 3,141 voters on July 16.
     With so low a turnout, tension was high among Broderick supporters as they gathered that Tuesday night at the American Legion hall in Shorewood. The Broderick campaign was counting on high turnout, because they believed their candidate's literature and personality had been making a difference. Indeed, Broderick kept his focus on lawn signs and selected, clear literature -- one brochure simply listing the diversity of people supporting him and their reasons, another explaining his opposition to privatization of the parks and his unwavering stand to cut supervisor salaries but retain the size of the County Board for better representation of all constituents.
    In fact, the way the returns came in, Broderick was down, and then he was up by almost 200 votes. But then things stalled when returns from a precinct where Goff was expected to do well became inexplicably late. And then later. What should have been an anxious few minutes of waiting stretched over an hour.
     Broderick, it turned out, did well in those late returns, capturing as much as 40% of the vote in the key precincts that were expected to go Goff's way. But the low turnout made things squeaky. His 52-48 percent victory actually translated into a mere 143 vote margin, the closest results so far in a supervisor final.
     "If there's a lesson from the pension scandal," Broderick had been telling supporters, "It isn't that the board is too big, it's that we need supervisors who pay attention to what's going on in front of them."
     McGuigan clearly paid for that lack of attention. Credit him for fighting back and having a pretty good record to point to, and he did make the race close, showing strength on Milwaukee's Northwest Side. But McDonald did even better in Brown Deer, a strong center of those original recall petitions. Still, McDonald's 53-47 percent victory translates into a 236 vote margin, the smallest at that point by which an incumbent had been ousted. Yes, total turnout (4,506 voters) was stronger than on the East Side, but that number is still seriously low. The vote pattern also suggests that McGuigan was making inroads against the recall fever, but not enough and not quickly enough.
     Having refused to compromise principles or pander to either recall simplicities or outside money, Broderick may prove to be the odd man out among the new members of the County Board. But actually, even some non-supporters suggested Tuesday night that he may prove one of the more influential county supervisors. His support runs deeper and wider among the activist community than many realize. He has participated in many successful campaigns, so now he can add personable candidate to the label of accomplished organizer.
    "His supporters truly care for him because he truly cares about these issues," said one politico, who expects Broderick to become a rallying point for a range of concerns about true reform, opposition to privatization, service to the poor and elderly, and representation for minorities. In typical fashion, Broderick on July 23 held his swearing-in ceremony in his backyard.

Bruce Fischer

THE CURIOUS CASE
OF BRUCE FISCHER
Why is one dedicated parks worker both honored and isolated? Depending on your work experience, here's a story you'll find unbelievable or all too believable.

McCallum's Cynical Pen
    Scott McCallum's line-item veto pen didn't do horrific damage to the piece of already damaged goods that reached his desk, otherwise known as the budget repair bill (see story at right). On July 26, he mainly preserved his soundbites -- the claim that he addressed a $1.1 billion without raising state taxes. The claim is very dubious, since there are unproven items in the bill, and it is also cynically misleading, since county, city and other taxes will have to step in to preserve some essential services the state is cutting or dropping funding for.
Scott McCallum     Most amusing and little noticed is that McCallum took out $2.5 million or so in savings in order to preserve pet projects or curry to special interests. He almost balanced that on the backs of the poor, saving a million alone by cutting the state public defender program serving indigent defendants. He also dumped a program that allowed bus rides for Milwaukee family visits to state prisoners.
    The spending he restored actually outweighed the money he cut. He preserved the Department of Electronic Government (a half million in savings gone), rejected transferring consumer protection from agriculture to justice oversight (another $900,000 in savings gone) and restored the office of performance evaluation, an audit service in the administrative department (another $670,000 back on taxpayers' backs).
     McCallum tried to make hay about restoring a program that rewarded municipalities for frugal management, neglecting to mention that the program was under the ax mainly because he thoughtlessly included it in his attack on shared revenue to municipalities. And he didn't change the sizeable shared revenue cuts in 2004.
     He was accused of violating promises by vetoing a measure that would have dumped developers from inclusion in the farmland tax break. That one and some things he left untouched should figure heavily in the governor's race in November.
     Despite pleas from opponents, McCallum left untouched the campaign finance reform measure (though many argue that it is doomed to fail in courts and everyone involved knew that) and the plan to expand I-94 lanes in Milwaukee. He also proposed another special session for ideas that he couldn't actually explain in detail, such as a "rainy day fund" mandate and "no new taxes without voter approval" law. All that "pie in the sky" proposals might make another soundbite for his ads, but McCallum well knows that constitutional requirements prevent most of those ideas from being in place for years even if he ever suggests acceptable details. And right now, the state confronts a projected $3 billion deficit for the next biennium budget.

Go here for earlier newsletters.

STATE REPAIR BILL
PLEASES NO ONE
    The compromise that nobody seemed to want doesn't solve the problem but unlocks the logjam at all Wisconsin's local governments, which can now cautiously work on their own budgets with a better grasp on what they will and won't get from the state.
    It is a philosophical as well as a pragmatic mess, this budget repair effort to address a $1.1 billion deficit. It has carried us from McCallum's false accusations that the corrective was to curb spending at the local level, which our stories and most of the newspapers in the state pretty well debunked, to an Assembly version that was dominated by the GOP agenda, to a Senate version dominated by the Democrats' agenda, to an acrimonious three-month compromise effort, and finally to the weirdest assortment of votes in favor and against in both the Senate and Assembly.
     This was a test of the leadership's ability to control its party members, not come up with some harmonious future approach to the state's monetary woes. Even with this narrowest of all political accords, dismay seemed the first response from all quarters. Unhappiness over many items in the budget repair, plus the entire process itself, clearly crossed party lines.
     Worse, the budget fix did not really fix anything, just delayed the wolf at the door.
     By using all the remaining tobacco settlement money as the main way to address the deficit, the Legislature not only robbed the state of future income but simply coated over its real problems of controlling its own spending.
     The legislature makes some stabs at controlling spending in the compromise, but a lot of observers are dubious that these control efforts will have any lasting effect -- in fact, they won't go into effect until years after the next huge deficit facing the state.
     Local municipalities can take small comfort that shared revenue to them was left alone until 2004, when they do face a $40 million cut. There is a balancing concept that immediately came under attack -- a plan to reward municipalities with a $40 million fund for consolidating services. Milwaukee and other community leaders also speculated aloud that some of our richest communities with the least concerns about essential services could consolidate and benefit from this approach while it would be difficult for many urban communities to find consolidation to offset the loss in shared revenue, not to mention actually providing good public service.
     The compromise cuts $44 million from the University of Wisconsin System budget -- a lot less than the $108 million originally proposed by Assembly Republicans -- and sets $104 million in state agency cuts. Those are just the highlights of a very complicated bill that may take months to fully grasp, particularly the overhaul of the truth-in-sentencing laws, an area of great importance.
     Leaders of both the Senate and Assembly wheeled and dealed to get the compromise through because under state law the Assembly and Senate can only vote the repair bill up or down, without offering amendments. As a consequence, there are items included in the final compromise just to pick up a key vote or two along the way.
     The plan contains a campaign finance reform package that at first blush looks impressive. It uses public grants, and allows extra money to respond to special attack campaigns, as a way to either get big money out of the campaign system or neutralize its impact. But the compromise has what some call a "poison pill." If any aspect of campaign finance is ruled unconstitutional, the whole bill is thrown out, and court challenges will start almost immediately.
     As our related story details, McCallum's line-item vetoes on this package were mainly done with an eye to Nov. 5, where his managerial and intellectual ineptitudes will finally face the voters.

ISSUES AND ANSWERS
    Our July 2002 newspaper addresses a lot of issues and longer versions of many stories are now online. Our deep investigation of the pension lawsuits leads off our in-depth section and we also explore how the county's politically motivated second thoughts have put a notable advance for clericals in jeopardy. Emerging union issues at MATC are also explored. There were also solid advances in our efforts to organize school bus drivers.
    Richard Abelson's column explores the realities of health costs in union negotiations, new deals are reported in That's Settled and revisit our salute to 16 nonprofit sector workers with veteran experience.
     Staff representative Bob Klaus provides an intriguing firsthand history of how it's taken three decades to bring Council 48 back to its root purposes.