AFSCME District Council 48 Newsletter Page

Workers
Serving
Milwaukee

AND MORE AND MORE:
ELECTIONS, THAT IS
    The latest supervisor to likely face a recall election is James White in the 1st District. On July 8, sufficient petitions were turned in against him. Barring irregularities or legal challenges, the Milwaukee County Election Commission is likely by the end of July to schedule an election, and opponents are already gathering.
     However, as previously speculated by AFSCME, the Milwaukee County Election Commission threw out petition signatures against Supervisor Lee Holloway, enough to prevent a recall election in his north side 5th District. They also confirmed enough signatures against Brown Deer's Jim McGuigan to force a July 16 election in his 6th District.
    Remember the old joke about "vote early and vote often"? Well, Milwaukeeans certainly began voting more often, even if it was district by district.
    But the results, while dominated by low turnout, suggest that voters in some districts may think once is enough -- they're booting supervisors out in the primary, where more than 50% of the vote provides an automatic win.
    And other scenarios are emerging. In the 6th District, the primary was just a general election because McGuigan faced only one opponent, recall organizer Rob McDonald, who narrowly won. District Council 48 was been able to make a recommendation to its members in only one July race, though, the 3rd District contest that took place July 16. There we strong endorsed Gerry Broderick in the first district election in which no incumbent was running. Narrowly, he won.
    These supervisor contests are small races, to be sure, in tight geographic (district) regions of Milwaukee County. They are certainly hard to get excited over.
    But these recall contests are proving just as influential as the countywide elections. Because they ultimately become countywide events. Look what happened June 18, when every sitting supervisor was voted out in three districts. Look what happened June 25, when two were summarily dismissed and Karen Ordinans was left hanging on in a weak second place.
    A fourth of the old County Board is gone. Also out the window, however, may be a new project or an open swimming pool, something you previously thought there were enough votes for on the County Board but now is completely in limbo.
    Wherever you stand on the county exec outcome, whatever you've heard about the future role of the County Board (part time, policy oriented, and so forth), hello, folks. These are 25 elected officials who each has a vote. It's not only about their own duties and size but also about their own relationship to the executive branch.
    Little will move forward in terms of the shape of county governance without them. We have also seen the County Board's determination in its votes and maneuvers to be treated as a major player, an unseemly scramble to be sure but a reminder of the power the board does possess. It is a power that wisely used can control excesses of the executive branch, but it is also a power that voters still don't completely understand or apparently endorse. It also right now may reflect a property tax reduction ferocity that will throw out services, and workers, right and left.
    There are, quietly, signs that some supervisors are fighting back to restore a balance of power in the face of voter outrage. Take Holloway, a 10 year veteran of the county board, the first black supervisor threatened with recall. His challenges to the process were not only successful, he is also trying to turn the tables on the recall organizers. He pointed out sufficient serious irregularities in the petition campaign and suggested that some of the petition circulators should be investigated for fraud.
    There were 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) and Jim Schmitt (20th District, failed twice). But there are also new efforts underway.
    Supervisors who thought they escaped have to take note of how many incumbents have already been bounced, knowing that alone could propel fresh efforts against them. The remaining supervisors seem to have clear choices -- stick to their principles or kowtow to forces at work against them. And the voters have to decide which kind of supervisor they really want.
    To this point, voters in an unaffected district have not much cared about what was happening in the district next door or across the county. But what will prove important is how the new County Board -- in attitude if not in membership turnover -- behaves both individually and collectively. Do they understand government? Will they stand up to or work with (preferably both) the county executive, the state legislature and other elements of the community?
    In some cases, replacing the current members makes a lot of sense. In others, maybe not. But it is hard in the fury of recall campaigns to make such distinctions, so it becomes imperative for voters to really know what they're voting out, or voting in. You'd think the taxpayers who aren't in a voting district affected would still want to know where their neighbors are taking them.
    So far, that's not the case, if you look at the horrifyingly low turnout figures, which have got to bother folks on every side of the polticial spectrum.
    Part of this, though, may be that we are electioned out, and that could slow things. After all, it the campaigns continue much longer, supervisors will be facing recalls right into the September primary and the November general election, where little things like a new governor and various state and congressional elections will also be decided. And all those recently elected are filling terms that expire in 2004, when every district gets to do it all over again, with less belief than in the past about the power of mere incumbency.

Staff representative Bill Mollenhauer was one of the well-wishers at a victory party for Joe Dudzik. Also check out our stories on Judge Butler and Annie Wacker, plus our analysis of the County Exec primary.

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.

City Will Freeze
Till End of Summer
     Planning for the worst, the Milwaukee Common Council in March initiated a hiring freeze for three months ending in June.
    Then in June the aldermen reinstituted the freeze with a few modifications. Blame it on uncertainty about how the state budget repair bill would come out, but there was another big factor: a several million dollar shortfall in a health insurance account that reimburses claims.
     The original proposal submitted by Common Council President Marvin Pratt was for a total freeze with no exceptions for three months, said John English, president of Local 47, but District Council 48 lobbied extensively against that proposal. While not able to totally defeat the concept of a freeze, the union was successful in adding many exemptions to it.
     The aldermen also agreed to a set of criteria for classifying a position vacancy as critical, and hence filled despite the freeze. The criteria:
     An increased hazard to the health or safety of the public or city personnel.
     A serious reduction in the current level of service to the public.
     A significant disruption to the administrative operations of the city or a department.
     A loss of revenue that would equal or exceed the savings from the vacancy.
     Unwarranted postponement of an authorized and funded capitol improvement project.
     Absence of a necessary position in a program supported by non-city tax levied funds.
     Among the exemptions won in such departments as public works were positions related to bridge and special street repair, the water department, parking checkers and sanitation, sewer and forestry workers.
     The Common Council may reconsider the freeze later in the year. Whether they decide to end it will probably depend on what is in the final Wisconsin budget.
     Even if the state retains shared revenue to municipalities, there may be other amendments in the final deficit repair bill that affect funding of local services.

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.

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.

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.

PRIMARY WINNERS AND LOSERS
John English and Dudzik
John English, president of Local 47, and Joe Dudzik shared a laugh Tuesday night April 2 at Meyer's Restaurant on the Southwest Side as Dudzik's victory in the 11th District aldermanic race was confirmed. The laugh might be connected to the fact that English used to be Dudzik's boss in the city local heirarchy.
Full Coverage and Photos

Wacker and son
Son Andy comforts Annie Wacker election night after what looked like a competitive uphill battle against more money and the mayor's faction on the school board disintegrated in a round of smear tactics.
Full Coverage and Photos.

Butler and Bock
Euphoria was understandable at Mader's April 2 as state Rep. Peter Bock at left and Judge Louis J. Butler realized that Butler was crushing incumbent Robert Crawford with 65% of the vote.
Full Coverage and Photos.

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

Laborfest 2001 Photos

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