The documents referenced in the posting "Waukesha Consultant Suggested Tax Sharing With Milwaukee To Win Diversion" will be put up on the blog electronically as soon as I can get them converted, with a link.
Sorry for the delay.
As Milwaukee welcomes Ed Flynn as the city's new police chief, selected from the outside (Springfield, MA), three former Milwaukee police officers on the day same get hit with long sentences (from 15-17 years) in US District Court for violating the civil rights of men they beat as part of a senseless, drunken mob.
Sentences that probably would have been shorter if, in their earlier state court cases, honest testimony had been presented by several current and ex-officers who didn't tell the truth, leading to unjust acquittals.
Mayor Tom Barrett summed up the sentencings for a community that needs to move past the beatings and everything the brutality and coverup represented:
“The sentences handed down today by Federal Judge Charles Clevert are fair and just punishment for the crimes committed against Mr. Frank Jude Jr. and Mr. Lovell Harris,." said Barrett. "These sentences bring Milwaukee closer to ending this sad chapter in our City’s history, and hopefully closer to healing and recovery.”
The New York Times reports that simple steps by consumers can save energy and cut greenhouse emissions substantially.
Coincidentally, the Backstory roundtable on WMCS-1290 AM Thursday afternoon touched on some of these efficient opportunities, such as installing compact flourescent bulbs.
If changes are made in mass numbers, benefits occur - - and The Washington Post reports separately on the same findings, focusing on the growing number of major corporations urging action to combat climate change.
The best news about that focus is the further dimunition of the fading argument that there is doubt about the reality of climate change.
The online environmental news site Grist supplies wonderful, readable information, and as a non-profit, can always use a donation.
I sent them a few bucks: here's where to go for more details.
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke's decision not to challenge Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, announced yesterday, was predicted on this blog on November 9th.
Consider what you read here reliably sourced and analyzed.
When the state dropped the bombshell that the cost to repair and expand I-94 From Milwaukee to the Illinois state line had doubled to $1.9 billion just as construction is to begin in 2008, more voices are calling for that price tag to drop about 10% so that commuter rail can be launched along the corridor, too.
It is finally dawning on people that transportation spending in Wisconsin is severely distorted, with highways getting nearly all the new-service money.
The highway expansion in our region is based on a now-outmoded study with traffic projections based on gasoline selling at $2.30/gallon.
Seen any of that lately as you, like most of us, try to save money by driving less?
Though some suburban officials have said 'over-our dead-bodies,' one prominent consultant paid by the Waukesha Water Utility proposed a while ago that the key to water sales to the suburbs west of the Great Lakes Basin was sharing new property tax revenues with Milwaukee.
The story is reprinted below intact from a guest posting I wrote last year for Bill Christofferson's Xoff Files blog - - in a simpler time when I had no blog of my own.
Insiders familiar with the nuances of the issue will see that things have moved forward a bit since then, but the matter is particularly germane now as Milwaukee officials want New Berlin to consider issues beyond mere payments per gallon for water, should a deal be struck.
It all involves a memo, dated June 10, 2004, "Arguments For and Against the City of Milwaukee Selling Water to the City of New Berlin," found, oddly enough, in the files of the Waukesha Water Utility. As to why, and how it got paid for after the Utility essentially disowned it, read on...
(I will have the original documents converted into an electronic format, and will post them, so bear with me below for such a length posting.)
Citing City of Milwaukee records and analyses, the memo indicated that 42 businesses from Milwaukee had migrated to New Berlin's Industrial Park when it opened, suggesting both that more industrial flight could follow water diversions and sharing tax resources as part of a diversion package could minimize Milwaukee's revenue losses.
"The losses had a negative impact on Milwaukee's industrial assessment and resulting property tax revenues," said the memo. "The sale of water to New Berlin could have a similar negative impact on Milwaukee industry during the decade."
More recently, State Senator Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin), has called City of Milwaukee officials' suggestions that water be sold in conjunction with a broader social and fiscal agenda "extortion." See her Nov. 1, 2007 blog posting.
The heart of the posting from the Xoff Files is in these few paragraphs, which I will italicize to separate them from the rest of this item.
The consultant referenced was Milwaukee attorney Barbara Boxer, who sent a strategy memo to the Waukesha Water Utility about how sharing property tax revenue with Milwaukee could help seal a diversion deal.
"The sale of water to New Berlin will create competition for industrial development between Milwaukee and New Berlin that may result in a loss of industry and related property tax revenues to Milwaukee" during the current decade, the memo said, citing Milwaukee records.
On the plus side, and again relying on Milwaukee records, the memo said selling water to New Berlin could help stabilize Milwaukee's water rates, provide an essential service to the suburbs, bring Milwaukee needed revenue, foster regional cooperation and establish a wider, cooperative governmental model.
Boxer's conclusion was that the argument for regional cooperation, because it had helped secure an earlier water sale agreement with Milwaukee to supply Lake Michigan water to New Berlin's in-basin territory, "gives considerable insight into strategies that may help advance the proposal for Waukesha."
The memo further suggested "an approach based on a regional tax concept" could help Waukesha "overcome many of the arguments against Milwaukee's sale of water."
And now the full posting:
Wednesday, October 18, 2006:
Hot Potato Found in Waukesha Water Utility Files
Here's the story of one water policy drama that played out behind-the-scenes at the Waukesha Water Utility, where a team of consultants and government officials is working hard to win a diversion of Lake Michigan water:
As the debate over whether Lake Michigan water should be piped to suburbs beyond the Great Lakes basin heated up in 2004, the utility received a memo from a Milwaukee law firm that included a summary of the potential results - - good and bad - - if New Berlin got a Lake Michigan diversion.
The utility's response at the time?
It told the author that the memo's preparation hadn't been authorized or coordinated with the utility's consulting team.
The utility eventually paid the law firm about $4,000 of an initial bill of just over $10,000 and filed the memo away.
Courtesy of the Wisconsin Open Records Statute, read the intriguing history of the unwanted and hitherto undisclosed water memo, including its suggestion that Waukesha woo Milwaukee with an offer of tax sharing, below...
The City of New Berlin wants a diversion of Lake Michigan water to the city's western portion that is outside the Great Lakes basin.
Proposed diversions from The Great Lakes - - the world's largest system of fresh surface water - - are becoming more contentious because some fast-growing Waukesha County suburbs are aggressively pressing for diversion permissions now.
Yet it turns out the case against diversions was included in a legal memorandum that sat unnoticed for two-and-a-half years in the strangest of places - - the files of the Waukesha Water Utility - - which itself wants a diversion of Lake Michigan water about six times larger than New Berlin's, records show.
Proposals to divert Great Lakes water are splitting the region along urban/suburban lines.
Citing radium contamination and potential water supply issues linked to the over-pumping of deep wells, some suburban and allied Waukesha County business interests argue that Waukesha communities are entitled to Lake Michigan water - - even if their communities lie outside the boundaries of the Great Lakes basin.
Meanwhile, many environmentalists fear that a New Berlin diversion could cause precedent-setting water losses to an already fragile and indispensable fresh water ecosystem.
And some Milwaukee activists and officials worry that selling water to the fast-growing suburbs would contribute to the very suburban sprawl that is draining value from the state's largest city.
The issue is front-and-center because all eight Great Lakes states are reviewing rule changes to a Compact their Governors signed with two Canadian Great Lakes provincial premiers in 1985.
The changes lay out potentially higher legal barriers that could slow or block the diversion of Lake Michigan water to Waukesha, western New Berlin and other municipalities outside the Great Lakes basin.
An open records request to Waukesha's Water Utility this summer unearthed numerous documents about water policy planning in Waukesha and some other Waukesha County communities.
Among the more documents were Waukesha's confidential - - and unsuccessful - - behind-the-scenes proposals in March and May that sought Gov. Jim Doyle's permission to divert water relatively quickly from Lake Michigan without applying to the other Great Lakes states for approval.
(http://wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=5113).
The open records request also produced the June 10, 2004 legal memorandum - - "Arguments For and Against the City of Milwaukee Selling Water to the City of New Berlin."
The memo was prepared by Attorney Barbara Boxer at the Milwaukee firm of Reinhart Boerner Van Buren, S.C., and relied heavily on City of Milwaukee records to support the pro-and-con arguments that the memo summarized.
On the negative side of the diversion argument, according to the memo: encouragement of urban sprawl, possible job losses, potentially-insufficient payments to Milwaukee, possible harm to the Great Lakes basin, and New Berlin's non-compliance with a Milwaukee requirement that municipalities seeking its water have a comprehensive housing strategy - - an omission the memo said New Berlin had subsequently addressed.
On the relationship of diverted water to the issue of job losses, the memo cited the earlier relocation of 42 Milwaukee firms to New Berlin's Industrial Park that had occurred in the 1970's.
"The sale of water to New Berlin will create competition for industrial development between Milwaukee and New Berlin that may result in a loss of industry and related property tax revenues to Milwaukee" during the current decade, the memo said, citing Milwaukee records.
On the plus side, and again relying on Milwaukee records, the memo said selling water to New Berlin could help stabilize Milwaukee's water rates, provide an essential service to the suburbs, bring Milwaukee needed revenue, foster regional cooperation and establish a wider, cooperative governmental model.
Boxer's conclusion was that the argument for regional cooperation,because it had helped secure an earlier water sale agreement with Milwaukee to supply Lake Michigan water to New Berlin's in-basin territory "gives considerable insight into strategies that may help advance the proposal for Waukesha.
"The memo further suggested "an approach based on a regional tax concept" could help Waukesha "overcome many of the arguments against Milwaukee's sale of water."
Boxer suggested she provide the utility with additional research into regional tax plans elsewhere.
Efforts to reach Boxer and the law firm for comment since September 24, 2006 have not produced a reply.
Dan Duchniak, the Waukesha utility's General Manager, distanced the utility from the memo.
Duchniak told Boxer by letter on August 30, 2004 that the memo had not been authorized contractually and had not been coordinated with his team of consultants.
"Without this effort and coordination, our position for a successful application to the Great Lakes Governors could be compromised," Duchniak wrote.
Records show that the Rinehard firm had a $60,000 contract with the Waukesha Water Utility in 2003 for work on drinking water quality and compliance issues, but not on the subjects outlined in the memo, Duchniak said.
Duchniak said his objections to the memo were entirely procedural and were unrelated to the memo's substance.
He said initially rejected a bill for the memo's preparation for $10,107.90, and later agreed to pay $3,945.
Duchniak's letter to Boxer included an offer to review a proposal from Boxer's firm for additional work, including lobbying, but a request to the utility for all contracts related to Waukesha's diversion planning shows no contracts with the firm.
The utility has retained Godfrey & Kahn, S.C., to work on some diversion legal planning, Martin Schreiber & Associates for public relations and lobbying, and GeoSyntec Consultants, Chicago, Illinois, for engineering advice.
Melissa Malott, chair of Emerge Wisconsin, offers this Guest Post:
To Progressives:
As I read about opportunities on this website about positive change in our government system, I think about the important change that the right people in the right situation can make. Think about the positive influence that one person can make.
For example, Senator Russ Feingold sets an amazing example for politicians. Every lobbyist in Washington knows that they aren't going to buy favors with Sen. Feingold's staff because of the strong ethic in the office. The right people make a huge difference.
The good news is that there are so many people who could make the changes that our political and government systems need, but they aren't running for office. Part of it is simply that they aren't inspired and trained to do so.
Fortunately, there is an organization dedicated to changing this.
Emerge Wisconsin identifies, inspires, and educates Democratic women about campaigning, and is offering its next intensive training program for Democratic women in Wisconsin in January, 2008.
We are looking for women who would be great leaders in local or state offices, and extend this invitation to readers of this blog and their friends to be part of our class.
Think about that woman in your life, whether a teacher, your mother, or sister, who made all the difference to you. Think about what they could have done in office.
Emerge Wisconsin's training sessions are held monthly from January through June 2008, with two sessions in March. The majority of sessions will be held in Milwaukee or Madison.
Program participants will learn how to become an effective candidate, from building a staff to giving a great interview. There will also be a Legislative Day when program participants will shadow Democratic women who hold public office.
Thanks to the contributions of those concerned about the need for more Democratic women in public office, the total cost of the six-month program, which includes materials, meals, and some lodging, is only $250.
Emerge Wisconsin believes that individual financial circumstances should NOT be a barrier to participation; partial and full financial aid may be awarded after admission to the program.
Please visit http://www.emergewi.org/ for more information or e-mail http://us.f541.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=kate@emergewi.org to have an application sent to you via electronic or U.S. mail.
The application deadline is approaching on December 5th, 2007.
We hope that you will take this opportunity to develop and strengthen your leadership skills along with other amazing women from across Wisconsin.
If you have any questions, or would like further details, please contact Kate Moen, Emerge Wisconsin Program Director, at Kate@emergewi.org.
Sincerely, Melissa Malott, Emerge Wisconsin Chair
My wife Susan and I have signed on as enthusiastic volunteers to help our son, Sam McGovern-Rowen, in the campaign he announced yesterday for Alderman in Milwaukee's 3rd District.
The election is in the spring: we couldn't be prouder.
Sam is an unusually bright, energetic, and committed young man who is currently the legislative aide to incumbent 3rd District Alderman Michael D'Amato. Mike disclosed this weekend that he would not seek another term.
Sam and his wife Maureen are the parents of young twin sons. They both are true public servants, as Maureen teaches at Hartford Avenue School. They epitomize the young families that the 3rd District and City of Milwaukee want to attract and need to retain.
60's people (the era, and our ages) like us wonder and worry about what's in store for the generations coming up, and often feel like potential, younger leaders with energy and ideas don't see politics as a desirable activity.
And why not? Politics and campaigns can be nasty, draining, and as a complete zero-sum game, awfully risky.
So having our own son step forward to run for Alderman is reassuring, exciting, downright uplifting - - not just because he is our son - - but because he has all the core principles and personal attributes that can help guarantee that our neighborhood, city and state can continue to prosper.
He is a progressive person who believes in cities - - I mean, really believes in cities - - and in the City of Milwaukee.
He understands that a welcoming and prosperous 3rd District helps Milwaukee succeed, and that a successful city with strong schools, safe streets, cool neighborhoods and a deep 'green' developmental/ environmental ethic is tailor-made for an historic, lakefront urban District like ours.
I think this is a great opportunity for our District - - to have an experienced and broad-minded candidate like Sam wanting to serve.
So we're rolling up our sleeves and getting to work - - not just as proud parents, but as veteran political activists, too.
"McGovern-Rowen For 3rd District Alderman Committee" doesn't have a website yet, but it has an address - - 1914 N. Prospect Ave., Apt. #3, Milwaukee, WI, 53202, and a treasurer who will gladly process donations.
And I'd be happy to forward email or street addresses to the campaign, or questions and suggestions: send them to jer45y@gmail.com.
And thanks.
(Authorized and paid for by McGovern-Rowen For 3rd District Alderman Committee, John Finerty, Treasurer.)
One Wisconsin Now has launched an online petition to try and persuade Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler to remove herself from hearing an appeal partially funded by the business organization that spent heavily in her campaign.
The petition link is here.
I'm not sure what is left of the Court's reputation, as Ziegler's tone-deaf relationship with the institution and her colleagues seems limitless.
She's already put them into the bizarre position of having to consider her discipline for an earlier round of ethics violations.
Those stemmed from conflicts of interest arising from routinely judging cases in Washington County involving a business in which she and her husband had a financial interest.
Has there ever been a learning curve for a Wisconsin jurist apparently this steep to master? I don't get it.
Yes, in this case, she did disclose the conflict with the appellant's financial backer - - Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce - - but look at the appearance!
There are more elements to this than just the legal and technical issues, important as they are:
This looks bad. The timing is breath-taking. As I said in an earlier post, when I first saw this on jsonline, I felt like I was reading The Onion.
(Full disclosure: I am on the board of a One Wisconsin Now arm, but had no role in OWN's earlier efforts regarding the Ziegler campaign, or the creation of this online effort, having learned about it in an email this morning.)
Canada is about to set aside a record number of acres to preserve forests.
This will help reduce greenhouse emissions and clean the air, with benefits working their way south to the US, and planet-wide.
There's a lesson here for folks right here in SE Wisconsin, where bashing the Canadians is something of a habit, as some politicians, and groups like the Waukesha Chamber of Commerce, erroneously have accused the Canadians of lying in wait to block Waukesha's access to Lake Michigan.
The Great Lakes are a shared resource.
More to the point, Canadians do not have a vote on, or a veto over, any diversion application forwarded by New Berlin, Waukesha or any Wisconsin or US community.
What Canada is doing, through forest preservation, is helping us all to enjoy a life-giving resource: clean air.
The same is true of water: if it's managed on a truly regional (The Great Lakes region, not the Waukesha-Milwaukee SMSA) and international scale, we all benefit.
The least the Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce could do is correct its erroneous web posting that contains the false, wierdly-jingoistic claim that a Waukesha diversion would require the approval of a foreign power's two provinces that border the Great Lakes.
From the Chamber's website is this part of a resolution it has adopted, and which should be corrected or just plain withdrawn:
"WHEREAS, the proposed compact includes many positive features, allowing decisions regarding local water usage to be vetoed by any one of the CGLG members is cause for serious concern. Currently, the compact allows for regional review of many of the compact’s provisions directly impacting Waukesha County. For example, as Waukesha looks to divert water for its community needs, such a diversion would require the unanimous approval of all eight states and the two Canadian Provinces.
"THEREFORE, on behalf of the current businesses and residents of our county, and with respect to future growth, The Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce asks that the legislature not approve any Great Lakes Compact that places the authority for granting or denying water diversions for Waukesha County in the hands of another state or country. While a well thought-out plan balancing the conservation of an invaluable regional resource with the needs of growing counties like Waukesha is essential, an approved compact must include a fair and equitable process for reviewing Great Lakes water diversion requests, not allowing a sole governmental authority veto power."
The Canadian role in such diversion applications' review is advisory only, a known and much-repeated fact, and will help preserve the Great Lakes for Waukesha residents and tens of millions in the US and Canada who share in that responsibility.
when I read this headline and blurb Tuesday night on jsonline.com:
"Ziegler to hear tax case funded by supporter
"State Supreme Court Justice Annette K. Ziegler is poised to sit on a tax case partially financed by a group that spent more than $2 million to get her elected."
This is the same Annette Ziegler waiting for the Court to issue her punishment for violations of the state's judicial code that included following improper procedures in cases in which she had a conflict-of-interest.
In the tax case, she has disclosed the potential conflict, but wouldn't it have been smart to recuse herself?
I posted an endorsement of Miwaukee Ald. Bob Bauman's proposal to peel a few bucks for the KRM Commuter rail from WisDOT's $1.9 billion budget to rebuild and add a lane to I-94 from Milwaukee to the Illinois line - - and look what happens:
An Illinois transportation blogger takes that posting and uses it to support a proposal to toll I-94 from Chcago to Milwaukee as a way to fund alternatives like Wisconsin commuter rail.
The blogger is clearly a transportation expert, but I don't think that's going to fly.
This might appear distasteful, but given water shortages, turning sewage into potable water through modern science is growing in acceptance.
It's not much different than cities now extracting water for eventual purification and use as drinking water downstream from a sewage discharge facility that has legally put treated effluent into the river upstream.
That's so commonplace that people don't really think much about it.
For instance, that's what happens routinely in Illinois communities' water utilities along the Fox River that are downstream from the City of Waukesha's wastewater treatment and discharge plant upstream.
In fact, a city like Waukesha could choose to reuse and recycle much of that wastewater as a way to reduce its need to drill more wells, or divert water from Lake Michigan to meet future water demand.
The National Wildlife Federation has issued a report that links adoption of the pending Great Lakes Compact with efforts to mitigate climate change.
The report is here, and among leaders in the midwest, quotes George Meyer, executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.
As this blog has reported repeatedly, Wisconsin is the only one of the eight US Great Lakes states without legislation adopted, or under consideration, to implement the Compact.
It cannot go into effect until all the eight states, and the US Congress, have approved similar versions.
The Compact is designed to establish rules and standards governing diversions of water out of the Great Lakes basin and to establish standards for new, large users of water within the basin.
Efforts to adopt the Compact, strengthen its conservation requirements and diversion prohibitions have been endorsed by a coalition of more than a dozen Wisconsin conservation, environmental and civic organizations - - but have been blocked in the Wisconsin legislature by pro-diversion Waukesha-area politicians and business interests.
Well, one very yesterday's Friend - - Jennifer Aniston, the new pitchwoman for "Glaceau," the vitamin-enhanced line of bottled "smart" waters which was recently purchased for $4.1 billion by Coca-Cola.
Water and vitamins and flavors for about $3 a bottle.
Since Aniston's celebrity is on the way down, maybe this suggests that bottled water is on the way out, too?
Probably not, but let's be optimistic and call it a small sign of desperation.
Green roofs. More transit. Comprehensive planning, for real.
Chicago continues to be city with a big imagination when it comes to announcing that cities can be greener stewards of the environment...so the goal of repaving its 2,000 miles of alleys with materials that allow rain and snow to seep naturally back into the water table is really exciting.
Why not find out what your city, village or town has on tap to save energy and conserve water.
Milwaukee Alderman Robert Bauman has introduced a resolution calling on the state to modestly pare back its spending (a projected $1.9 billion) on added lanes to I-94 between Milwaukee and the Illinois line and merge the spending with the commuter rail plan now stalled.
Great idea. Logical. Fiscally responsible. Only takes about 12% of the $1.9 billion for rail. Mindful of rising gas prices and the effect of tailpipe emissions on the environment.
The resolution should pass, forcing the state to more seriously re-think its transportation planning.
If Gov. Jim Doyle is serious about cutting greenhouse emissions in combination with other Great Lakes and Midwestern Governors and Canadian premiers, what better place to start than committing to commuter rail linking Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha, with connections to Chicago to the south, and perhaps Madison to the west.
The time for this shift is now.
At least there will be no jail time for Oscar Ayala-Cornejo, 25, who was kicked off the Milwaukee Police Department for having assumed a relative's identity as a child at the behest of his parents, then lying on his official paperwork about his name.
He faces deportation to his native Mexico, while his family and connections are here.
Sad ending to a sad case, though it could have been worse.
I wonder how many good upstanding citizens in our city and state have a relative who came into this country illegally, or who assumed another person's ID?
How many people have relatives who, years ago, jumped ship and swam ashore in New York City because their paperwork or background in their native Europe was suspect, or flawed?
And how many who came saying they were someone else, with relatives' paperwork, such as it was?
How many people know of someone in these situations, regardless of when they occurred?
More than you'd think, I think, because America's borders have been inviting and porous for many, many years.
It's good to bring rational solutions to illegal immigration. I'm for that - - without the rancor and hysteria useless anger that some have brought to the debate for partisan or ideological purposes.
And to remember that there can be unintended consequences, for all parties - - the community included - - when violators are discovered.
Alaya-Cornejo apparently came here illegally as a child, and was given the identity by his parents. As a child, he was in no position to say "no." And things continued from there.
From our easy chairs, and with our good fortune for having been born here, some might want to point fingers, but that judgement is useless.
What counts is what happened in court.
By all reports, Milwaukee lost the services of a good police officer, and also those of his brother, another MPD officer, who lost his job, too, because he knew of the subterfuge.
But thanks to the sentencing judge, Rudolph Randa, who from the federal bench ruled wisely.
He understood that was no need to add to the losses.
Good lesson to absorb.
Mary Lazich trots out that old guvmint-run health care bogeyman - - but as a state employee, isn't she eligible for one variation, where the state makes nearly the entire payment, sets many of the coverage parameters, and so forth?
Maybe she should disclose whether she in fact is enrolled in that kind of plan, what % of the cost she pays each month, what the deductibles and limits and coverages are, etc.
A few days ago I posted an item about a settlement that allowed a Franklin shopping center owner to proceed with a wetlands filling that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) could and should have halted.
How do these things happen, you ask?
Peter McKeever, a statewide conservancy specialist who was involved in the case through one of the parties - - the Milwaukee County Conservation Coalition (MC3) - - sent me a "rest of the story" explanation that provides the shocking answer:
The Resource Loses Twice, by Peter McKeever:
It was bad enough that developer Mark Cartstenson got approval from the DNR, the Department of Commerce, and the City of Franklin to tear out 200 year-old oak trees and fill two small wetlands with his unimaginative and insensitive commercial development.
Had he done a good practicable alternative analysis, the agencies would have understood that there were less harmful ways to do his site plan.
And it was bad enough that when the DNR interpreted its decision on the wetlands to be applicable only to the direct impacts to the wetlands and not to the secondary impacts.
And it was bad enough that Franklin and the DNR allowed construction…er, read destruction…to continue after the decision was appealed.
But it was after the local citizens appealed that the agency really blew it.
The DNR issued its water quality certification on June 12. The local citizens met the 30 day deadline for appealing by filing their petition for a hearing on the 29th day, July 11.
Under the rules, the DNR has twenty days to decide whether or not to grant a hearing. If the hearing is not granted within those twenty days, it is deemed denied as a matter of law.
So what did DNR do? Staff prepared a letter approving the petition and granting the hearing request on July 27, well within the 20 days. So far, so good.
But the letter did not get signed by the Secretary and mailed until August 2….two days late.
Result: no right to a hearing, simply because the agency missed the mailing deadline. No opportunity for local citizens to have a hearing, present evidence, make their case, and argue that the permit should never have been granted. Ugly.
Its true the developer settled by agreeing to pay $46,000, to be used to purchase other wetlands in the area and that the DNR agreed not to allow developers to continue construction that adversely affects wetlands while the water quality permits are being challenged. Those are both good outcomes.
But the oak trees and the wetlands lost. They are gone, never to be seen again. They lost when the permits were granted, when construction was not stopped, and when local citizens could not challenge the decisions because of a missed deadline.
That’s bad.
Speculation will continue until the Wisconsin Supreme Court makes a ruling to end the ethics case pending against now sitting Justice Annette Ziegler.
I think one tip-off that what some Ziegler supporters had hoped would be a slap on the wrist instead could be a hard jab is found in the tone and timing of a recent Wisconsin State Journal editorial, which I'll cite in a moment.
But first, the background.
The case arouse out of Ziegler's multiple failures as a Washington County Circuit Court judge to disclose she had a financial interest in a bank that was a party repeatedly in cases before her. Nor did she remove herself from the cases after they were assigned to her.
The case has worked its way through a proceeding involving a judicial commission, and a hearing before a panel of appellate judges.
As if Wisconsin's judiciary need another case-related embarrassment, the appellate panel chairman, Ralph Adam Fine opined that Ziegler's admitted violations of the judicial ethics code, compared to some unspecified previous case, were "a blip."
"Blip?"
Ouch - - if you're Ziegler, or in her corner. With friends like that...
My hunch is that Fine more or less sealed Ziegler's fate, serving to push the Court to issue her nothing short of a harshly-worded reprimand, and perhaps a suspension that is more than symbolic, to drive home now two points:
1. Ziegler violated the judicial ethics code, and also...
2. Ralph Adam Fine does not speak for the Wisconsin judicial system, and does not define what we should expect from people seeking or attaining a spot on a circuit court, let alone the state supreme court.
The Wisconsin State Journal is the morning paper most likely on the Justices' State Capitol desks when they get to work, and there's little doubt they missed this editorial calling for Court-ordered discipline that repudiates the Fine statement, too.
Some of the editorial's key points:
"Ziegler 's actions are not, as Court of Appeals Presiding Judge Ralph Adam Fine suggested last week, just a "blip on the screen " compared to wrongdoing by other Wisconsin judges. Ziegler disregarded clear rules -- what the other two Court of Appeals judges called a "bright line " -- governing ethical conduct.
"Ziegler did not recuse herself from cases involving West Bend Savings Bank even though her husband was serving on the bank 's board of directors.
"Ziegler handled not one, not two, but 51 West Bend Savings Bank cases where she had a conflict of interest. So far, she has admitted violating the state 's ethics code in 11 of those cases. She has paid a fine and other costs to try to put the ongoing disciplinary action behind her.
"But before that can happen, a tougher penalty is required. "
Newspaper editorial writers don't direct government decision-making, but they can have an influence.
Don't forget that the Justices - - as well as circuit judges - - live and work in the political world.
They are elected-officials, too, appreciating editorial support as much as people running for Sheriff and the County Board.
I would suspect that an editorial that takes a swipe at Ralph Adam Fine in its otherwise strongly-worded "Don't go easy on Ziegler" argument will inevitably find its way into the Court's thinking.
And it's important to note that the State Journal, which led the statewide mainstream media covering the Ziegler issue, is generally a GOP-leaning publication - - more reason for Ziegler to be concerned.
Ziegler will no doubt feel that she should not be punished for the remarks of another jurist, and that editorial writers should have nothing to do with it, but there never would have been a case against her if she had followed the state's judicial and conflict-of-ethics admonitions.
Milwaukee's homegrown Alterra Coffee Roasters, known for high-end beverages, job creation and building recycling (the once-closed city water pumping station on the lakefront, and old commercial space at 1st and Pittsburgh in the Third Ward to name a couple), has outdone itself with with a complex on a former brownfield in Milwaukee's east side Riverwest neighborhood.
The Riverwest Currents neighborhood newspaper online has the story.
Maybe it's a sign that Wisconsin's failure to even produce a bill for discussion - - making it the laggard in Great Lakes states' legisltive and policy inaction - - is breaking into mainstream awareness.
Note this posting by a 20-year-old UW-Madison engineering student.
These mega-farms produce huge waste streams - - it's a major issue in Wisconsin, where lax regulation allows routine water contamination - - and an Indiana blogger brings us up-to-date on the issue there.
Worth a read and bookmarking.
Some additional history and background for Wisconsinites:
In Manitowoc County, Centerville CARES, a citizens' activist group, has actually begun doing some of the regulatory-related monitoring and testing that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said it was unable to get to.
You can read about that here.
And legal analyses from Midwest Environmental Advocates, is here.
The blogger Capper helps show us the origins of the now-infamous "coexist" bumper sticker, which helps put the uproar associated with the 'parody' version into a brighter light.
My thanks.
Turns out a unique Israeli museum dedicated to peace and reconciliation helped to create it.
The Museum of the Seam says this is its goal:
"Museum on the Seam is a unique museum in Israel, displaying contemporary art that deals with different aspects of the socio-political reality.
"Through the works of artists from Israel and abroad, who respond to the stress and tension between and within groups, the museum invites the visitors to examine the degree of influence of the social environment on the individual and vice versa.
"Between the local and the universal, between pluralism and extreme ideologies, the message of The Museum calls for listening and discussion, for accepting the other and those different from us and respect for our fellow man and his liberty.'
So the right-wing bloggers who have twisted "coexist"into something ugly by adding a Swastika to the design are tampering even more deeply than their other intention - - to redirect the design against Muslims.
You can enter the issue as it has unfolded in Milwaukee and on the Internet with this posting.
And grasp why the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee would get involved to open Journal Communications' eyes to the damage its resources are causing to the community's spirit and potential for growth.
From its website, here is the Interfaith mission statement:
"The Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee is the interfaith agency established by the religious community to address the social issues affecting the quality of life in the Greater Milwaukee area.
"The mission of the Conference is based on the religious values of the dignity of every person and the solidarity of the human community.
"The Conference enables individuals, congregations, and the religious leadership to participate as an interfaith presence in the dialogue and action that impact on this dignity and solidarity."
So...we have bloggers and talk show hosts in Milwaukee throwing stones at the work or mission of groups like Interfaith, or the Israeli museum.
One ill-informed blogging professor at the Catholic, Jesuit-run Marquette University even called Interfaith a "leftist" group, "a bunch of liberal bureaucrat/activists."
That's some some impressive name-calling.
Here, from the Interfaith website, are the denominations that provide members to Interfaith board, and represent 500 congregations in the region.
What a leftist, liberal bureucratic cabal!
American Baptist Churches of Wisconsin
Church of God in Christ, Wisconsin First Jurisdiction
Episcopal Church, Diocese of Milwaukee
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Greater Milwaukee Synod
Islamic Society of Milwaukee
Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations
Milwaukee Jewish Federation
Presbyterian Church (USA), Presbytery of Milwaukee
Religious Society of Friends, The Milwaukee Meeting
Roman Catholic Church, Milwaukee Archdiocese
United Church of Christ, Southeast Wisconsin Association
United Methodist Church, Metro North and South Districts
Unitarian Universalist Churches, Southeast Wisconsin Association
Wisconsin Council of Rabbis
Wisconsin General Baptist State Convention
The Marquette University blogger professor John McAdams had to back down (check his comment responses) when he found out that Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan, spiritual leader of 675,000 Catholics in southeastern Wisconsin, sat on the Interfaith board!
D'oh!
So what will be the outcome as we all get enlightened about Interfaith, and "coexist," and how they are supposed to work together in an environment of intellectual and spiritual honesty?
This nasty little Internet and media outburst in Milwaukee could lead to something genuinely useful, even uplifting: a productive moment in the community's history - - if powerful media owners and personalities that have decided, for now, to side with intolerance can make the break and shift towards dialogue, and then genuine community-building in Milwaukee
That will require some reflection, maybe even some humility- - both of which are supposed to be in large supply at this generous time of year.
I'd say we're at a crossroads moment.
Which way do we go, as a community, is the question?
To tolerance or divisiveness?
Inclusion or exclusion?
Coexistence or isolation, and the corrosive ignorance that will be perpetuated, if we make the wrong choice?
No one there or anywhere else has asked me to post this, but here is the Interfaith mission statement taken off the group's website.
It helps to explain why it chose to criticize Charlie Sykes for posting and defending with "a line in the sand" a controversial bumper sticker the organization found offensive.
(You can work you back into the skirmish, here, or scroll back a few posts on this blog.)
"Mission Statement
"The Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee is the interfaith agency established by the religious community to address the social issues affecting the quality of life in the Greater Milwaukee area.
"The mission of the Conference is based on the religious values of the dignity of every person and the solidarity of the human community.
"The Conference enables individuals, congregations, and the religious leadership to participate as an interfaith presence in the dialogue and action that impact on this dignity and solidarity."
Secondly, let me disclose that this group gave my wife its annual Frank Zeidler award for community service last year.
And also let me disclose that I have been to many Interfaith functions where people of all religions and creeds spoke, studied, debated, prayed and broke bread together.
These are experiences I heartily recommend, along with the organization's authoritative and positive presence in a region frequently wracked by misunderstanding and intolerance.
The Bard's Juliet wondered "what's in a name," and some centuries later, one Waukesha resident answers: An eyesore.
The Daily Reporter's Sean Ryan has the story of a Waukesha man who doesn't want to look out of his Tallgrass subdivision home's windows and see the name "Waukesha" emblazoned 93-feet up on the side of the city's new water tower.
What the homeowner prefers is a water tower without lettering, painted with a blue and grey pattern that will somehow, Presto! make the planned big edifice disappear into background skies - - bad news for migrating birds and those low-flying helicopters that other Waukesha County folks use for their daily commutes.
But Waukesha wants more water - - surely you've heard all about that - - and needs some place to store it: the new tower is going in, with or without lettering, by 2009.
And since we're discussing what's in a name - - is there really tallgrass under the snow in the photo accompanying Ryan's online piece.
Let's hope this isn't just another part of Waukesha like the recently renamed Country Springs resort, or the streets (Springhouse Dr., Mineral Springs Blvd., etc) in Pabst Farms that recall an environment long gone, when Waukesha was known as Spring City, or The Saratoga Of The West.
It's important to remember when you read this tale of wetlands destruction in Franklin that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources - - the protectors of the environment in our state, the regulators, if you will - - allowed this destruction to begin before appeals to prevent it had been fully heard.
Some permitting 'process.'
The wtlands loss - - including some 200 year-old trees in the Franklin Fiasco is 2.6 acres.
A more vigilent DNR methodology and some wetlands improvements to be carried out elsewhere are included in the Franklin settlement.
Doncha think natural wetlands work a wee bit better than the artificial variety, as Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy Vice President Kristen Wilhelm suggests?
The blogger Sprawled Out, based in Franklin, weighs in here.
It's disheartening that the DNR is already reviewing the probable destruction of up to 500 acres of wetlands for the huge expansion of the Murphy Oil refinery in Superior, close to Lake Superior.
Let's hope they remember their regulatory obligatory on the public's behalf before the wetlands destruction begins.
I am fine with Charlie Sykes calling my blog posting about his skirmish with the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee "genuinely silly."
In an Internet environment often rendered useless with name-calling, that's refreshingly mild.
And I do think, and I repeat, that he's in a hypocritical position because of his earlier battle with Miller Brewing over its participation in a tasteless and offensive advertisement.
If you're going to get offended about someone misusing religious symbolism (a Last Supper image), then don't praise and defend others who are doing the same thing (tampering with the Islamic Crescent and playing with the Star of David).
So be consistent, or risk being labeled a hyprocrite.
(Some updated information about the origin of the bumper sticker design, associated with an Israeli museum that promotes religious dialogue, tolerance, and social understanding, is here. The so-called 'parodied' design that Charlie and his fellow right-wing bloggers are defending is certainly the wrong place insert a Swastika, aim it at Islam - - and then say their handiwork has virtue.)
But I take issue with his statement that my posting indicates "[I] really do hate conservatives and all their ilk."
I defy any reasonable person to find that thread in my posting. (Again, it is here.)
And let me point out that I get along fine with any number of conservatives, including my "Backstory" (WMCS-AM 1130) roundtable colleague Rick Esenberg, the conservative blogger and Marquette Law School teacher.
Have we disagreed about many things? Of course. That's part of the reason Eric Von had us as regulars (I have fallen away: Rick is more reliable). But do I hate Rick?
Of course not. And I'd be shocked if he said he thought I do.
Charlie may also have forgotten that when he asked for a liberal to call into his radio show and attack the Colorado 9/11 hate-monger Ward Churchill, I was the one who called in and was put on the air.
One reason I pulled out of traffic and called in immediately on my cell phone was because I particularly hated the way Churchill connected innocent 9/11 World Trade Tower victims to the holocaust - - as perpetrators - - calling them "little Eichmanns."
That made his attack on the victims doubly-disgusting, since Eichmann was evil incarnate, and I object - - and Charlie can call me perpetually offended about this, because I am - - to anyone throwing around the Nazi label where it absolutely has no relevance.
Which brings me to another point:
Charlie lumps me in with people who call conservatives Nazis. That I have never done
I dislike seeing or hearing that kind of ignorant, casual and inaccuratly-out-of-context use of the term whenever I see it.
I remember emailing Jeff Wagner and WTMJ station managers complaining that Wagner referred to supporters of an anti-smoking ban as the "smoking Nazis"- - I got no replies, by the way - - and it grates on me when Rush Limbaugh mocks supporters of women's rights as "feminazis."
Maybe we on the left don't speak out loudly enough when people on our side of the argument throw the term around. I'll be vigilant about it - - and I will do the same when I see rightists doing it, too.
I know Charlie's Nazi reference came in a catch-all list of complaints he has against people who disagree with him, and I have already pleaded guilty to have called Charlie a hypocrite (another in his list of complaints), but I don't want to be associated with people who throw that "Nazi" term around.
I can appreciate that Charlie is under some pressure in this battle - - one that I continue to think is not in the interest of WTMJ to have on its air, blog, and with Interfaith and its mainstream membership.
That's a judgement-call for the station, of course. But he still needs to be more accurate in how he describes the situation - - a situation much of his own making, and elevating.
Bottom line:
Charlie's was the genuinely silly stance to take in support of a genuinely silly bumper sticker (he called it "Pure Genius") that adds nothing of substance to the public debate.
I do give Charlie credit for having opened his comment privilege to me and others who disagree with him.
I was very happy to read on Thursday's big Thanksgiving day Milwaukee Journal Sentinel front page that UW-M and local leaders are coordinating a research and business strategy to put the city out front on water issues.
We've got Lake Michigan and a host of water-rich businesses already here, nicely positioned for growth and advancement as water becomes a hotter topic in a warming climate.
So why not build on UW-M's outstanding, but somewhat overlooked Great Lakes WATER (Wisconsin Aquatic Technology and Environmental Research) Institute, and its fortuitous proximity to the Great Lakes - - all to make the school and city the unquestioned leader in water science, policy and industry?
Then I remembered reading something similar..somewhere...twice, actually, making the same argument - - that UW-M needed to rediscover, upgrade and promote its WATER Institute to put itself in a leadership position in water science and policy development.
Where was it? Where was it?
Then I remembered: Right here on this blog - - months ago.
I'm humbly reprinting those posting below, and I'll continue to support UW-M's efforts to elevate the WATER Institute and related efforts to help Milwaukee become the world capital of water science and business:
Monday, March 26, 2007
Scientists Clean Up Everything From Bad Plumbing To Bad Policy
For years, UW-Milwaukee has been scratching its collective bureaucratic head and wondering: "How can we position ourselves as a science and research center?"
It has looked westward to UW-Madison with envy, as that university campus assumed leadership and won decades of grants in biotech and other sciences.
But through inertia, or some other human tendency to overlook institutions or people already on the scene that consistently perform at a high level, UW-Milwaukee has failed to capitalize on its Great Lakes WATER Institute - - even though its staff and expertise are key ingredients in the push for conservation, water-based public health, and Great Lakes sustainability.
Around here, those are pretty hot topics.
Case in point: WATER Institute professor Sandra McLellan, an expert in water and beach quality, has found that dangerous E. coli bacteria is on Bradford Beach where stormwater pipes owned by Milwaukee County routinely deposit polluted water.
McLellan also has noted - - and it's a point consistently worth repeating - - that while polluted stormwater presents the most serious dangers to public health, the general public misperception, shaped by media, is that sewage overflows, not stormwater pollution, presents the major public risk.
So the WATER Institute affects the public understanding of issues and risk factors, and can have an impact on policies that fix problems, too. For a university looking for greater research credibility, that sounds like a mission statement.
Similarly, McLellan helped Miller Park discover that it was inadvertently sending human waste into the Menomonee River.
It is known among scientists and regulators that the wrong plumbing connection at Miller Park is not the only mistaken or accidental source of fecal pollution ending up in the area's rivers, streams and lakes.
Elsewhere, WATER Institute professors are bringing years of experience with the region's groundwater into the debate over water resource management, and specifically into whether possible diversions from Lake Michigan are the wisest and most sustainable activities.
These UW-M scientists have created fact sheets and power point presentations about the region's water supply, all of which helps inject top-flight data, computer models and informed opinion into the water debate.
Along with colleagues in related agencies, WATER Institute personnel are getting solid information into studies and eventual recommendations by the regional planning commission (SEWRPC) and a state legislative study committee on the Great Lake Compact.
Materials posted by The US Geological Survey, and another scientific team that works closely with the WATER Institute here are helping policy-makers interpret differently Waukesha's suggestion that it was already part of the Lake Michigan basin through what it called "tributary groundwater."
So UW-Milwaukee doesn't have to look much farther than its Great Lakes WATER Institute for a research identity and anchor.
What the school needs is a media and grant-writing strategy to better promote and utilize the experts it already has on board, and who are well-connected with a larger scientific community, but are sometimes unappreciated.
The Great Lakes WATER Institute can become the authoritative site for information and policy recommendations about Great Lakes water conservation and resource management.
Posted by James Rowen at 8:14 AM
------------------
And there was this posting, too:
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Editorial Call For A Center For The Great Lakes
From Michigan, a plea for one coordinated center for Great Lakes' water-related study.
An excellent idea, one that UW-Milwaukee should jump on because it already runs the Great Lakes WATER Institute, has world-class experts with expertise in surface and underground water, and could easily morph into a broader research institution.
UW-M's administration should leverage its existing resources and make itself a key regional player - - in this case, the region being the Great Lakes basin - - in water policy.
Posted by James Rowen at 2:18 PM
James Howard Kuntsler offers a typically-provocative essay about life in suburbia as credit and energy crises make that lifestyle expensive, perhaps doomed.
Reading not for the faint-hearded.
Heckuva a way to start Thanksgiving, but let's take the rest of the day off.
By a vote of 13-1, Milwaukee's Common Council approved a policy that bars any water sale to a suburb outside the Great Lakes basin (read: New Berlin, Waukesha, et al) until the Wisconsin legislature adopts the pending Great Lakes Compact.
A note about the overwhelming vote is at the bottom of this WisPolitics.com summary, here.
This outcome was not unexpected: the Council and Mayor Tom Barrett want the legislature to put the Compact's rules, standards and conservation goals into place in our state so that water sales are conducted with guidelines and transparent processes.
Or conducted similarly in other states, using pre-Compact ratification Wisconsin sales as an excuse to move water outside the basin in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and elsewhere in the region.
At Wisconsin's expense. That's what a Compact is all about.
It's a minimal expectation, endorsed by the Wisconsin Attorney General in a formal opinion now nearly a year old, but continually ignored by major media in Wisconsin, including the Journal Sentinel, which today editorially called on the Milwaukee Common Council to reject the resolution.
Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes are a shared resource, held in trust and managed by eight states and two Canadian provinces. It is not up to any single state to unilaterally move those waters beyond the borders of the Great Lakes basin.
For the eight US states involved, a federal law in place since 1986 requires the Governors of those states to approve unanimously any such out-of-basin diversion, and the pending Compact finally establishes rules and standards so those diversions, when approved, are not capricious.
Why argue that Wisconsin should, on its own, let Milwaukee sell water to New Berlin, if federal law, and the Wisconsin AG opinion, says it's illegal?
If Waukesha County legislators are smart, they will take the Council's resolution along with the AG opinion as motivations to get the Compact passed in Wisconsin - - something obstructed by State Sen. Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin) and other short-sighted business and political leaders.
Greendale, home of highway-lovin' State Rep. Jeff Stone (R), is thinking of buying a trolley!
How could he let this happen? Like all good Republicans in the State Asembly, he knows trolleys are the death-knell to a community!!!
Please, God, let this be a rubber-tired 'trolley,' and not the real thing, or Greendale is lost.
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the bad news:
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 21, 2007, 3:36 p.m.
Downtown Greendale may get a trolley
Greendale - Village officials are considering purchasing a trolley to transport shoppers and visitors around the popular downtown area.
More than 200,000 people from all over the country visit downtown Greendale each year - to shop at the stores and visit the Reiman Publications Visitor Center and Taste of Home Outlet Store.
Those who favor buying the $30,000 trolley say it would add to the charm of downtown and would help ease traffic during the summer and special events.
The good folks over at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce again endorse dirty air, calling on Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle to lobby for relaxed federal ozone standards for Wisconsin counties that have substantial air pollution problems.
They did this a few months ago, too, but hey: it's a long holiday weekend, so why not cough this up again into the public debate and throw a thick cloud of negativity over the Thanksgiving spirit?
These leading Wisconsin industrialists must have missed the recent Midwest Governors' summit on climate change, which endorsed a host of goals designed to clean up the air - - a shared resource.
The WMC calls the regulations "onerous."
Come on, WMC. Own up to it. You want another little bump in profit maximization, and if it dirties up our lungs we can just suck it up.
Literally.
Greed is an ugly phenomenon: The WMC is completely out of touch with everyday people, especially those with asthmatic kids or aging parents - - and one of these days the WMC membership is going to rebel and throw out its cold-hearted staff and leadership.
WTMJ 620-AM talker Charlie Sykes is devoting much air time today to his battle with Milwaukee's prestigious and influential Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee over his posting, along with other conservative bloggers, of religious symbols in ways that could be construed as offending Muslims, Jews, and anyone with an ecumenical or religiously-tolerant outlook.
A link to Charlie's website and the uproar is here, so you judge for yourselves.
Since the controversial posting's imagery was meant to inflame passions about Islam in the context of today's growing and dangerous religious strife, and had nothing to do with, say, religious understanding or reconciliation - - which is pretty much the entire purpose of the Interfaith mission - - there's little wonder that the organization inserted itself into what had been up to a few days ago an Internet, bloggers' and talk-show debate.
Charlie is framing the issue as one of free speech. His free speech. And I've got no complaint with that. I want him to have free speech, but to exercise caution, like we all do, so we do not commit libel, slander, or needlessly poison the public debate.
And he mischaracterizes this post in a follow-up.
What's the point, even if it's profitable, wins ratings, notoriety, celebrity? It's a drag on the community. What's wrong with a little effort to be uplifting? To be a real uniter, not a 50,000-watt divider.
Charlie says he's drawing a line in the sand, that he will not back down.
Over this?
This is the line he wants to establish and defend?
Set Charlie aside for a moment, though he mischaracterizes this post in a follow-up to his original:
Is it worth it, for WTMJ station management, and the larger community, too, to establish this as the battlefield where issues, debate, rules and outcomes are defined?
And while we mull that over, you and I and institutions ranging from Journal Communications to Interfaith, let's point out two relevant things, too:
WTMJ radio goes out of its way to stir the pot in this community from a hard, angry rightist perspective, intentionally- - from Sykes in the morning through afternoons with Jeff Wagner and now James Harris, to the much farther-right homophobic, Muslim-baiting Michael Savage at night.
The station increasingly defines itself as a right-wing megaphone, kissing off a large portion of its audience everyday, who, once the affable Gene Mueller is gone by 8:30 AM, or when the ballgame is over at night finds an alternative.
So let's not shed tears that WTMJ is under fire. It's the station's choice to go far-right, and in this case, bring flak from an organization as mainstream as Interfaith. Take a look at Interfaith's board membership.
It includes leaders from all the mainstream churches, synagogues, mosques, along with powerhouses like the Milwaukee archdiocese.
Sykes and WTMJ and Journal Communications want that fight?
Charlie says he's drawing the line in the sand. Is management really willing to stand there with him? Over a stupid bumper sticker and the loyalty of a few righty bloggers, and a fake fight over political correctness, which is as subjective as you can get?
Secondly, in case it gets forgotten, Charlie was among those leading the recent charge against Miller Brewing for its use of Last Supper imagery in ad for a Gay Rights celebration that people like Charlie found offensive.
You know what? I thought it was offensive, too. I was surprised at Miller's foolishness. It was not carefully thought out. People in those positions need to think beyond the dollar sign.
So the company, under pressure, apologized. I thought that was the right thing to do.
I think the company agreed to remove its affiliation, or its logo, from the ad, or in similar future ads.
My point is that even Charlie gets offended, and uses his power to rally the like-minded to put pressure on an organization - - in this case, Miller Brewing, successfully - - to make a change with regard to its use of imagery that means important things to a religious community.
That is exactly what Interfaith is doing, and WTMJ should do what Charlie helped Miller do. Apologize, and be more mindful and consistent in the future when using or debating religion, its symbolism or imagery.
Two updates:
Station management tells Journal Sentinel columnist Tim Cuprisin that it backs Charlie. Credit Cuprisin with asking and posting it on his blog; that advances the discussion and informs everyone on an important aspect of the story.
Secondly: I corrected a misspelling in my original posting. Dumb errors are acknowledged, and corrected.
The Road To Sprawlville goes multimedia into Waukesha County again, this time courtesy of a videographer.
He's produced and put up on a MTV website a very sharp piece, "America's Dairyland," about Ruby Farms demise and other sad realities in Brookfield.
He left me a note about it in the comment section of my blog.
Check out his video and circulate it.
He's also showing us how to better use the Internet and new media to get a message out.
Some Americans forget that the Great Lakes are not "ours."
Ownership, and management, if you will, are shared with Canada, and as this newspaper report indicates, public opinion in Canada is not enthralled with what it sees as a US (Ohio? Waukesha County?) agenda that dismisses Canadians' perspectives.
Food for thought.
Of course, there are still people around here who just don't grasp the many values of rail transit - - but the advertising folks at AMTRAK get it.
There is a move afoot to name a new elementary school in Madison after Gaylord Nelson.
That's an excellent idea. While there are many good suggestions - - you can send your comments in support of Nelson through a web link, here.
Just click on his name.
As Nelson's warnings about the need for environmentalism grow more relevant daily, what better way in Madison could there be than institutionalize the man and his message in an educational setting.
Another reminder is here.
State Appeals Court judge Ralph Adam Fine has made headlines - - sample here - - suggesting that now-Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler's ethical lapses are "a blip" compared to other judges' transgressions.
A good analysis is here. And here, by Scot Ross.
If it's now an acceptable appellate court position that one party in a court case does not need to know that the presiding judge has a personal and financial interest in the outcome, then we're all in a lot of trouble.
Regardless of the hearing finding and eventual Supreme Court ruling on the ethics complaint against Ziegler, the state high court now needs to expand its definition of the case before it.
It should strongly reinforce basic rules and expectations of fairness before the bench by specifically rejecting Fine's remark.
Remember this story the next time you see politicians in the parched Southwest eyeing Great Lakes water.
No Great Lakes water for such a frivolous purpose, right?
But also remember that the water park planned for New Berlin will utilize diverted Lake Michigan water, if that diversion plan is approved.
Is one really better than the other?
The Toronto Star sums up the growing international consciousness - - from new books to heavenly appeals - - about better managing our fresh water.
Someone needs to get the word to Arizona, where a water park is slated for the desert.
A French economic development organization finds that metro Cleveland has more wealth (per capita income) than Portland, and is right behind Paris.
Say what?
It's more proof that Midwesterners need to better tell their story. Need to promote economic and PR strategies that define and sell the region.
And focus on cities.
Urbanity.
In other words, to build and invest, and line up resources and oomph, for lack of a better concept, where the people already are - - not pushing water parks and shopping malls and more chain store big boxes on to farm fields, then holding a news conference in the parking lot to celebrate such energy-eating and ultimately self-defeating varieties of economic 'development.'
The Brookings Institution is promoting assertively a Midwestern metro strategy, and believes strongly in urban, central city development, as seen in this recent Brookings' presentation about Seattle.
To a limited degree, some Milwaukee-area interests, like the public-private M-7 partnership, are getting on board.
But many high-visibility, on-the-ground development initiatives, both public and private, are still too focused in Wisconsin away from its major urban area, Milwaukee.
These strategies, if you can call them that, fail to take full advantage of Milwaukee's built environment, its infrastructure and efficiently-arrayed assets - - its density, access to fresh water, a port, an international airport, the AMTRAK link to Chicago, an expanding Riverwalk, and solid, integrated manufacturing, university, cultural and health-care/hospital complexes.
Put another way, in our region, movers and shakers want to dissociate urban from metro, or city from metro, lavishing attention on the sub and exurban.
Want an example? Take water.
The debate over water policy and value in southeastern Wisconsin is misdirected.
Planners in our part of the state want to divert water away from cities and employment opportunities in the Lake Michigan basin and into sprawling, newer suburbs and subdivisions.
A related example?
The state is facilitating that movement of jobs, wealth and water conservation away from cities by blowing billions on new highways instead of strategically reducing that spending and offering choices.
The state should be focusing on transit upgrades to better link workers to jobs and to circulate people and their commerce through the city and region - - with urban investment as the intentional, deliberate underpinning.
The Milwaukee downtown is still not served by modern rail, leaving it in the transportation dark ages and limiting the city's economic vitality, and its future.
The business community, in the main, has never stepped forward and exerted leadership on the downtown rail issue, first because it prefers the suburban-first model, and secondly because it is cowed by right-wing talk radio.
Look at Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, as an example, since Milwaukee County operates the transit system in our county.
He is a Republican, as are most of the city and region's business leaders, yet they make no demand on him to better promote the city by advancing its transit system with a rail option.
So Milwaukee County has an anti-rail, thus effectively anti-urban leader, while the business community as a whole looks the other way.
The result: Reduced service. Higher fares. A failing system. And derailed trolley or the guided electric buses ("The Connector") that could help the city, and along with it, the suburbs, region and state.
What transportation big picture does Walker support?
The regional freeway plan.
That scheme requires billions of dollars to 'improve' and widen freeways as far away as Walworth County.
That's your Milwaukee County transportation and economic development plan: moving the economy to rural Walworth, or exurban Waukesha County to the Jefferson County line.
It will also take tens of millions of dollars of taxable land off the Milwaukee City, schools and County tax base, including eleven new miles of lanes and ramps on valuable real estate in the downtown for the $810 million Marquette Interchange reconstruction.
Without a dime for any transit upgrade in the area.
And the freeway plan will soon eat up a fresh $1.9 billion for added north-south lanes on I-94 between Milwaukee and the Illinois state line, while a parallel proposal for commuter rail in the same corridor is dead in the water from lack of money (though $91 million is available), but mainly through a failure of political will.
The plan to expand UW-Milwaukee at the Milwaukee County grounds will be good for the region - - but by taking the engineering and research campus expansion to Wauwatosa, and declining sites in the Menomonee Valley or Park East corridor downtown, the powers that be are removing all that activity from the city.
Without the light rail lines that were killed years ago that could have provided modern transit links to the nearby Zoo, the community is again facing up to development and transportation gaps that are consequences of political and transit failings.
What will UW-M offer to researchers coming in from Chicago or the airport for conferences: Shuttle buses?
Will it force students to drive into Tosa from their East side apartments, having failed to step up and support the Connector line that could have offered a pleasant, nifty connection to this proposed new suburban campus?
It's a stunning irony that Scott Walker will benefit politically from the UW-M expansion onto the County Grounds he manages, yet has resisted direct appeals to support rail or Connector lines from Michael Cudahy - - the generous entrepreneur who is financing the purchase of the county grounds' acreage for the UW-M research campus.
Cudahy has been a visionary on transit and on downtown development in the public interest - - he took the Pabst Theater off the taxpayers' backs and built Pier Wisconsin on the lakefront - - but hasn't found his understanding for transit matched by his peers, or embraced by the political establishment.
A pity.
Milwaukee could rise on the international wealth and influence lists if the public and private sectors here and statewide decided that Milwaukee was the logical economic development focus for the state.
Without that commitment, without that belief, Wisconsin and the Milwaukee area will stay somewhere modestly in the middle of the pack, having turned its back on its diverse population, and on the value of cities, embracing caution and inertia over vision and initiative.
Jaws dropped and taxpayers hid their wallets last week when the Wisconsin Department of Transportation pegged the cost of adding a lane and other 'improvements' on I-94 between Mitchell airport and the Illinois border at $1.9 billion.
Our DOT is famous for touting major highway projects as "on time and under budget," but what about "in line with estimates, and reality?"
Not this baby: its projected cost was $942 million in 2003 - - courtesy of the regional planning commission, where the regional freeway expansion and reconstruction scheme was hatched.
Without a financing recommendation.
Now don't get me wrong: $942 million of the public's money isn't chickenfeed, but it is slightly less than half last week's $1.9 billion blockbuster.
Anyone think when all is said and done that $1.9 billion will be final tab? (Gretchen Schuldt tells us why there's no way, here.)
So let me suggest a new slogan for the DOT, where former secretary Chuck Thompson once famously and honestly said the agency's mission was "to let contracts."
The inspiration is WisDOT's $1.9 billion bottom-line to redo one stretch of I-94:
"In The Ground...At Twice The Price!"
One Wisconsin Now, in conjunction with Monday's judiciary panel hearing regarding Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler's ethics case, has added live-blogging plans to its posted collection of records and information at:
http://www.conflictsfromatozielger.com/.
Brightbend, by Raj Shukla. We need more activist bloggers. Check it out.
Security and civil liberties is the subject of this year's annual lecture scheduled for November 30 at the UW-Madison Law School to honor the long career of former US Rep. Robert Kastenmeier.
The 4:00 p.m. program is free, and open to the public, but reservations are required by Wednesday, November 21. Details and online registration links are here.
Kastenmeier is still going strong; For years, he was a brainy, hard-working Member of Congress, a quiet leader and always a revered figure in Madison politics.
The featured speaker at this year's lecture honoring Kastenmeier and his legacy is Harold Hongju Koh.
He is Dean, and Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, at Yale Law School.
Koh, an author, also served in the U.S. State Department from 1998 to 2001 as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
Additional remarks will be made by US Sen. Russ Feingold (D) and US Rep. Tom Petri, (R).
Are any Wisconsin or Great Lakes-area organizations or policy-makers making plans to participate in, or acknowledge, this scheduled day (12/8) of awareness and action on climate change?
No...this isn't a post brought to you by some Fortune 500 Companies.
Just a way to acknowledge interesting things where you find them:
First it was Wal-Mart putting up green buildings. Then Toyota beginning to green car-making facilities.
Now it's Frito-Lay running 500,000 pounds of potatoes a day through a mere mid-size plant in Arizona that utilizes state-of-the-art energy inputs, plus water conservation and and multiple levels of recycling - - something approximating zero energy use annually.
Now if they could just get the saturated fat out of the chips...
State Sen. Mary Lazich has touted the views of Ohio State Senator Tim Grendell that oppose the adoption of the Great Lakes Compact.
She even forwarded his opinions to the state legislative study committee, where staffers from Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources labeled Grendell's views irrelevant to Wisconsin law.
Lazich should check more carefully into the company she keeps: Grendell had to make a public apology for a racially-tinged barb he aimed at an African-American colleague and leader in the Ohio legislature.
The story with the details from the Cincinnati Enquirer is here, and thanks to Adam Young who left this information in the comment box on this earlier posting of mine.
Here are the key paragraphs from the Enquirer story:
"Grendell, of Geauga County, directed his comments last week toward state Sen. Mark Mallory of Cincinnati, who was a co-sponsor of a resolution asking the General Assembly to ratify the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
"Grendell, who is white, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer for a story published Thursday that Mallory is "the only reason I might support the OhioReads program," referring to the state's volunteer tutoring program for schoolchildren.
"Grendell also said he doubted that Mallory, who is black, would understand the U.S. Supreme Court's historic 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that allowed legal racial separation.
"Grendell took the House floor Tuesday and apologized to Mallory, members of both the House and Senate and the citizens of Ohio."
Sen. Lazich: heckuva pal you got there, and thanks for running around the Capitol suggesting that Grendell is something of an oracle.
I wonder if Grendell knows that the Plessy decision is considered something of a stain on the history of the US Supreme Court, and that its "separate but equal" ruling that legalized racial segregation in the schools was overturned in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954?
Wisconsin's announcement Thursday of a fresh $1.9 billion to widen I-94 south of Milwaukee - - already badly timed to coincide with the Midwest governors' energy savings/global warming awareness summit - - is still in the news as the UN again, but with deep urgency, urges action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
And that's $1.9 billion, with more billions to come for other portions of the so-called freeway system, without a parallel plan, or dime of funding, for transit improvements.
Wisconsin needs to break free of the stranglehold that the road-builders have over the political process in this state.
Without a change in the political dynamic that finances campaigns, Wisconsin will never move towards something resembling balanced transportation and coherent, climate change solutions.
Alternative energy usage and power generation is important, as the governors indicated at their meeting.
Without a similar approach to transportation, Wisconsin will make no contribution to cleaner air, and climate change solutions.
Without a sense of urgency and commitment that mirrors, or at a minimum reflects the scientific and political approach pushed by the UN, Wisconsin is dooming itself to irrelevancy, with legacies for its current leaders to match.
Wisconsin hosted a Great Lakes governors' energy summit this week that produced lofty promises to coordinate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
A few hours later, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation released the schedule to spend a record-setting $1.9 billion to add another north-south traffic lane on I-94 between the Mitchell interchange near the airport for 35 miles south to the Illinois state line.
So we're inducing more driving at a time of record oil prices, knowing that driving releases greenhouse gases?
And we're spending this money on highway expansion based on gasoline costing $2.30 a gallon, when today's price is more than 25% higher and only going higher?
And the funding sources for this giant sop to road-builders aren't even nailed down, as Gretchen Schuldt points out on her blog?
These contradictions make a mockery of the Governors' energy summit and the state's commitment to sound fiscal and environmental stewardship.
Wisconsin's energy policy is still firmly in the grip of the highway lobby, and its control of historic sums of public funds that are intentionally directed away from transit and other conservation tools is flat-out crazy, embarrassing and, frankly, deflating.
There is a natural coalition statewide that needs to rein in this completely unacceptable dynamic:
Smaller communities outstate whose road needs are left behind; transit systems starved for operating and equipment resources; conservation groups promoting clean air and land preservation; businesses investing in energy-saving technologies, individuals fed up with government waste and tone-deaf indifference to today's issues - - these interests have to be harnessed to stop Wisconsin's capture and control by the highway lobby.
More business leaders are promoting the idea that the pending Great Lakes Compact is bad for Wisconsin, reports the Daily Reporter.
The Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce have held firm to this position, and is now joined by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce, says the Daily Reporter.
If they keep it up, and further delay the implementation of the Compact and its protections that help preserve Wisconsin's water resources, the Great Lakes will become more vulnerable to withdrawals to faraway states of these already-declining fresh water, economic assets.
These arguments are contained in the article with excellent commonsense commentary by several leading Wisonsin environmentalists, including Keith Reopelle of Clean Wisconsin and Jodi Habush Sinykin, of Midwest Environmental Advocates.
Reopelle and Sinykin were members of the ill-fated Kedzie Committee, the state's legislative study committee on the Compact.
That committee in 2007 was prevented from reporting out a draft Compact implementing bill by obstructionist tactics and rhetoric by Waukesha politicians and business leaders along the lines of those advanced by business representatives in the Daily Reporter article.
It took a major corruption scandal in Alaska to bring about some reform in the way oil companies compensate Alaskans for the depletion of that resource.
The oil companies' routine whining and lobbying failed to stop the much-needed reforms because the Alaskan public discerned that their public officials and special interests were too closely linked.
And rebelled.
This should be a lesson for Wisconsin politicos as they inch towards greenlighting Murphy Oil's six-fold expansion onto 400-500 acres of wetlands in Superior, near Lake Superior and thereby bring massive new refining and pipeline infrastructure to the Lake Superior watershed.
Sometimes it hurts politically to be too close to Big Oil, which in Wisconsin, with its sole existing, but small refinery 35,000 barrel-per-day, means Murphy.
Raising the capacity to 235,000 barrels a day, in that sensitive location, could be a political tipping point in Wisconsin for residents fed up with the energy lobby, including the road-builders, directing state policy-making.
A related item about blockbuster, budget-breaking highway expansion in the face of Wisconsin initiatives to combat global warming, is here.
Michael Horne's listing and analysis of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's class of early retirees is pretty well done.
Whitney Gould is the most prominent lost voice in the paper's cost-cutting round of buyouts.
Few writers nationally, and none locally, had her authoritative presence on design and environment. No doubt the owners of Pabst Farms and their allies at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation are ecstatic. The rest of us will miss her.
Greg Stanford was always a favorite of mine. I liked his writing, his style, his view of the world and of newspapers. We were both from Washington, DC, so we could talk DC sports and history.
He became a genuine Milwaukee asset. He'll be missed.
Also among the big loses: the departure of Barbara Dembski, who was not as well known publicly, but was a power at the paper with many top jobs on her resume.
A true professional, she made Crossroads a much better section. David Haynes is certainly a capable replacement, and he inherits an important part of the paper.
Many of the other departing once-ink-stained wretches were colleagues and friends from the old Journal, like Dennis McCann and Bob Riepenhoff. Dave Doege was a Sentinel guy whom I got to know better after the merger - - another real pro.
I wish them all well, and as I have told some of them already, there is life and freedom after the newsroom.
Enjoy it.
A federal appeals court threw out the current ineffective fuel economy standards for light trucks, essentially sending the program back for better standards that have a relationship to the real world.
This is another good step in pushing manufacturers to build more efficient vehicles, and could have been done years ago, saving the planet from some of the greenhouse emissions now contributing to global warming, and conserving gasoline that now costs premiums reflected by excess demand.
Bad news from Muskegon, MI: a third Great Lakes freighter has run aground in recent months, as water levels fall - - but while Great Lakes politicos keep failing to keep public attention focused on these precioyus bodies of fresh water and get the Great Lakes Compact adopted.
Think a warming climate and drought are only issues for the US West, or Atlanta, or faraway desert places?
Think again.
The Milwaukee County Board is restoring many of Scott Walker's deleted budget items. So it goes in the fake Milwaukee County budget 'drama's of the Walker years - - Walker sends up to the Supervisors another fake budget, filled with trims that no responsible public official can stomach.
So the spending is restored. Vetoes are made. Vetoes are overridden. Taxes edge up.
Walker will say that it's not his fault and that he was the fiscal hero and his campaign brochures and ads will tout his submission of no-tax-increase budgets.
But that wasn't the outcome, and Walker knew what the outcome would be.
And sigh...what could he do? Those darn supervisors...
What baloney.
UPDATE: It seems that the Journal Sentinel agrees with me.
Satellite imagery shows that Hurricanes Rita and Katrina killed or damaged an estimated 320 million trees - - an unprecedented environmental disaster.
If global warming increases hurricane strength, as predicted, the cascading effects of climate change will continue to expand.
All the more reason to do everything personally and politically feasible to slow this process down.
Waukesha blogger and activist Jim Bouman ferrets out information about Waukesha's plans to obtain Lake Michigan water - - despite more closed meetings held by the Waukesha Water Utility.
This is real public service blogging: We owe Jim our thanks.
State Capitol sources tell me that discussions continue between state regulators and Waukesha officials about possible ways that Waukesha might propose in an eventual diversion application to return diverted water back to Lake Michigan, though there is no resolution to the technical, let alone political and fiscal questions - - yet.
Without a plan to achieve this so-called "return flow," one or more of the other Great Lakes states will surely block the application.
Federal law requires than any diversion of water to a community outside of the Great Lakes basin like Waukesha has to have the unanimous approval of all the eight Great Lakes governors.
Creating a net loss for Lake Michigan fails basic political and environmental tests - - but if Waukesha can show a way to get the water back, then the city has a better, but not guaranteed chance for the other states' crucial approval.
Michigan has taken a pretty hard line historically, for the most part, against water leaving the Great Lakes basin, and though Waukesha has argued as recently as 2006 that unseen, underground connections connect it to the Great Lakes basin, Waukesha knows it has to guarantee return flow - - or risk its diversion application being sunk.
Some recent statements from Waukesha indicate movement towards return flow commitments, but what that means precisely isn't clear.
The problems for Waukesha:
Whether the state and Waukesha can figure out a credible return flow solution that meets technical, environmental and political standards is still a matter of discussion between city and state officials, I am told.
The MMSD financing issue has barely been acknowledged, sources say.
Additionally: The regional planning commission (SEWRPC) may recommend creating a regional water authority to push greater quantities of Lake Michigan water into several additional communities through a loophole in the pending, new Great Lakes water agreement (The Great Lakes Compact).
I believe this is where SEWRPC's nearly-two-year-water supply study is headed - - and I predict strong resistance to any Wisconsin community's diversion application if it appears to the other Great Lakes states that Wisconsin is looking for an end-run around this new, multi-state and international water conservation Compact that has been years in the making.
Anyway: We'll see if the Waukesha consultants that blogger Jim Bowman has begun to identify can figure out a saleable framework for its diversion planning.
And see if Waukesha gets caught up in any backlash created by SEWRPC's potential embrace of a new water authority designed to facilitate water transfers across the SEWRPC multi-county jurisdiction with relatively minimal reviews.
Not to mention what will become of New Berlin's efforts to win a diversion in the face of an Attorney General's opinion - - continually unreported by the media since December, 2006 - - stating that Wisconsin cannot approve a diversion to New Berlin or Waukesha without the approvals of the other Great Lakes governors laid out both in Federal law and the pending Compact.
News that the County's much-touted, long-overdue pension scandal probe is on life support could help the fledgling campaign by State Sen. Lena Taylor (R-Milwaukee) for Scott Walker's County Executive position.
She'd have a issue: Failed leadership on the most crucial issue facing Milwaukee County.
If Scott Walker and County government can't be trusted to launch and finance an independent investigation into systematic pension system abuses, then it's time to clean house - - really clean house - - and let a new County Exec partner with the US Attorney and let the chips fall where they may.
One Wisconsin Now (OWN) - - a Milwaukee-based progressive policy and communications organization - - is launching a new website to highlight the Wisconsin Judicial Commission's upcoming disciplinary review into ethics allegations against now-State Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler.
The hearing begins next Monday morning, September 19th at the Washington County Courthouse.
During this year's Supreme Court election that was won by Ziegler, OWN documented a pattern of cases over which Ziegler presided in her Washington County court room that involved a West Bend bank on whose board her husband served as a paid director.
State rules discourage or prohibit such conflicts, or require that they be disclosed to the parties: Ziegler eventually reached a settlement with the State Ethics Board in which she admitted to ethics code violations regarding some of the cases, and paid a civil forfeiture.
The Wisconsin Judicial Commission proceeding on the 19th is a separate inquiry: further discipline against Ziegler could occur once the matter moves to the State Supreme Court for final disposition - - an awkward process, to say the least, as Ziegler is now a member of the Court and will be judged by her colleagues.
Her earlier request that the Commission's proceeding take place based only on written briefs was denied.
The OWN website includes details of a number of the controversial cases, along with other archives and more material about additional financial relationships between Ziegler and her husband, and the bank.
I am on the Board of Directors of one OWN organization, but played no role in its Ziegler probe or the establishment of the new website.
New Berlin is discussing Lake Michigan water purchases with several potential supplying communities, complaining that the City of Milwaukee is dragging its feet as a seller.
New Berlin's complaints are misdirected.
If the state adopted the Great Lakes Compact, clarified the rules and let the other Great Lakes states know that Wisconsin would review diversions with some sort of real process on its books, then diversion applications could be processed more smoothly.
New Berlin can thank its own State Senator, Mary Lazich, (R), for torpedoing Compact negotiations in Madison this summer and fall, putting her own city in water limbo.
Without a Compact, no sale from Milwaukee, Oak Creek or Racine, or from Timbuktu, for that matter, is likely to be approved by Wisconsin regulators or the other Great Lakes states, as required by the draft Compact and existing federal law.
Note that Waukesha is continuing its secrecy-laden efforts for a separate diversion, repeating its penchant for confidentiality that was exposed in 2006 with the surfacing of secret appeals to Gov. Jim Doyle for backdoor-diversion approvals - - appeals that Doyle turned aside.
Furthermore, as I have pointed out on this blog several times - - Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager issued a lengthy opinion nearly a year ago saying that Wisconsin could not, on its own, approve a diversion of Lake Michigan water to New Berlin, or Waukesha, without the approval of the other Great Lakes states' governors.
In the opinion, Lautenschlager cited the pending Compact as well as current federal law.
It does not matter that Lautenschlager is no longer the Wisconsin AG: it was the opinion of the office, and Wisconsin officials would be fools to proceed with a diversion approval unilaterally with an AG opinion saying they cannot.
New Berlin can try and pressure Milwaukee for a water sale by visiting Oak Creek or Racine, but none of these communities can sell, yet, as Lautenschlager pointed out.
New Berlin should try and win its own state senator to its cause, though she has thrown in with Compact bashers on the states'-right fringes in Ohio, jeopardizing the agreement across the Great Lakes, and certainly helping to block future sales to water-hungry New Berlin customers.
I had a close look the last couple of days at what is left of University Bay's marshlands at the west end of the University of Wisconsin campus on Lake Mendota, and it's a trashed construction zone - - along with a great deal of already-filled property holding UW structures and parking lots.
How did the UW get permission (or did it?) to fill that land?
The same way it ran the Charter St. coal-fired plant for years - - administratively making up its own rules until last week's courthouse butt-kicking in a federal Clean Air suit brought by the Sierra Club?
After the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources had taken the unusual and embarrassing step of filing an enforcement action against the UW - - a sister state agency - - over the way the power plant was being operated?
I know there has been some successful preservationist activity in the area, but wetlands fillings were supposed to be hard to do in Wisconsin - - except, apparently, on the UW-Madison campus.
CNN has compiled a list of the 25 US housing markets where home values could fall the fastest - - many on average above 20%.
Most are in the once-fabulous sunbelt - - Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas - - and none are in Wisconsin.
We never had the stratospheric climb in housing values that some of these now fading stars experienced, so maybe we'll have a softer landing here.
Two looming issues if housing stays depressed for a few years: falling property tax collections.
With tax increases limited annually by legislation, and public sentiment, the lines on the graph will cross, and some municipalities with declining property tax bases could face a drastic plunge in projected revenues - - the very dollars that keep the fire trucks rolling and police squads patrolling.
I posed that "what if" question a year or so ago to a City of Milwaukee official, whose response was "I don't want to think about it."
The other questions is what happens to Baby Boomers' nest eggs, many of which included inflation equity in the old homestead.
I can hear you now: "I don't want to think about it."
The Center for American Progress has put together a wrap-up of national water issues, including some Great Lakes material. Nothing earth-shattering, but a decent compendium, here.
No wonder we can't afford health insurance for kids, clean water, and paying for other domestic needs.
But there's always money for the military in our Garrison State.
The Great Lakes Water Wars' author Peter Annin has put up a very informative website, with comprehensive links to, and detailed archives for, a number of local and regional water issues.
These include The Great Lakes Compact and New Berlin's diversion application, with other jurisdictions' comments.
That some good work.
I've added it to my growing index (recently-added links are italicized) of related sites and blogs about the Great Lakes, along with the UWM Water Institute site.
Thanks to Peter Annin and his staff.
Some years ago, the state transportation department wanted to replace the 6th Street Viaduct with an ugly, flat-span concrete bridge lifted from the Interstate Highway design book.
Mayor John Norquist (disclosure: I worked for him) wanted a more inviting urban design, and balked, and won the stand-off, producing the beautiful 6th Street Bridge.
The final, award-winning project also gracefully drops to street level, connecting to the Valley and adding value in a way that the flat-span design could not.
The new bridge has created connections in and around the south side and downtown- - actual intersections on the street grid - - that will make the new Harley-Davidson Museum far more accessible, along with other businesses and walkways along the Menomonee River and a rebuilt Canal Street.
To get all that, there had to be a strong, comprehensive vision that integrated traffic, planning, business development and aesthetics.
So there had to be a willingness to resist the transportation department, which just wants to do the simple thing: lay concrete and avoid much that is innovative for Wisconsin.
These lessons have been learned again, this time with nearly-completed remade rail station downtown.
Once an eyesore, the station will combine rail and Greyhound bus terminals, again with a modern, welcoming design that pays homage to the 6th Street Bridge nearby, and to the Calatrava Art Museum Addition and Pier Wisconsin building to the east on the lakefront.
Again, there had to be a fight with the state transportation bureaucrats.
The initial rebuilding concept would have kept much of the cheap, repellent design. Worse, the developer wanted to add a fast-food drive-through window, as if that was any kind of upgrade at all. Talk about dissing the growing numbers of AMTRAK users: welcome to Milwaukee: do you want fries with that burger?
Milwaukee Alderman Bob Bauman began the resistance, and Mayor Tom Barrett took up the fight, too.
They correctly understood that the city needed a showcase station to continue the momentum generated by the other positive changes in and over the Valley, and to promote transit in all its modalities.
Whitney Gould correctly appraises the victory that the new station represents.
Everyone involved with this effort deserves praise.
Thought I'd get together a list of blogs and other sites that focus on Great Lakes resources, the Great Lakes Compact and related issues.
Here's a first cut (Note that this has been updated since its initial posting, with two additions in italics). Feel free to send me others and, in time, I'll update this again.
Online news and information sites:
For a few hours on Wednesday, Nov. 7th, the far Right's leading climate change deniers and internet pals thought they'd found the mother lode: as the New York Times put it, a "scientific paper" was said to have emerged that proved global warming to be a natural, rather than a human-induced phenomenon .
The Right was overjoyed. Al Gore was gonna go down!
Mother lode?
According to a good summary posted at Daily Kos, Limbaugh rushed in to find only fool's gold.
The hoaxer had his motives, laid out on his website here.
The Michigan posting is here. Another excellent example of the growing value of Internet-based resources, which I have argued is often under-utilized by Wisconsin environmental and other non-profit groups.
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has wisely dropped his politically-charged suggestion that the parched US West get diversions of Great Lakes water, but the reactions keep pouring in.
Here's a recent Indiana editorial calling for adoption of the Great Lakes Compact to make sure the Great Lakes water stays in its basin.
(One note: the editorial erroneously states that the Compact would bar a diversion of water from the Great Lakes basin unless all Great Lakes states and Canadian provinces approve. If the diversion were to a community like Waukesha that is totally outside the basin, the states would all have to approve, but in no case would the Canadians have anything more than an advisory role. No vote.)
Richardson is a Democratic presidential candidate who is also auditioning for his party's vice-presidential nod. But he's has hurt his standing in the heavily-Democratic Great Lakes cities - - Chicago, Detroit, Gary, Milwaukee, Cleveland and others.
Throwing "Bill Richardson Great Lakes" into the Google search engine produces 921,000 hits.
Not all are about this controversy, but relevant listings still show up on the 66th page: a big and embedded gaffe for Richardson to overcome - - and a continuing boost to efforts to push the Compact forward where stalled, including Wisconsin
Improvement in the Cuyahoga River in Ohio mirror the happy results in Milwaukee when the North Ave. Dam was taken out during the administration of former Mayor John Norquist (disclosure: I worked for Norquist).
Among the cool outcomes: a nice fall salmon run.
Give Gov. Jim Doyle credit for convening Midwest Governors in Milwaukee to address the regional challenges and opportunities posed by climate change.
We'll see what these leaders will agree to do.
Here is the agenda for two days of meetings that begin Nov. 14 at The Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee.
Certainly there is opportunity because the region's manufacturing, agricultural, higher-ed and water resources are well-positioned for a coordinated "green" orientation.
On the downside, the region burns a great deal of emission-producing coal, and in Wisconsin, transit still takes a backseat to highway expansion.
And the Governors making up the Great Lakes contingent among Midwestern leaders have had relatively little success implementing their Great Lakes Compact - - an indication that regional cooperation in this part of the country is easily stymied.
Doyle has created a task force on climate change: its work should dovetail with the multi-state effort.
Groups and individuals should let the Governor know they want bold and effective solutions from both the state and regional effort, and will go to bat for that agenda.
Two environmental organizations are beginning legal action against those responsible for clear-cutting several acres of land along the Milwaukee River just north of the city limits.
Midwest Environmental Advocates filed preliminary papers in the matter on behalf of Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers.
Developers wanting to showcase a view of the river cut down trees and plantings without a permit, exposing the river and riverbank to damaging erosion, and generally trashing a site close to Estabrook Park.
It's a good thing that there are groups to take action against arrogant property owners - - who, in their own self-interested way, are little different than planners in state government, and in other communities, who want to tear up wetlands and agricultural property for wider highways, new ramps and other destructive projects.
Southern members of Congress are taking the first steps towards creating a national water policy, which Michigan members of Congress - - correctly sensing an effort to divert Great Lakes water - - are strongly opposing.
Again: Michigan's bi-partisan representatives take the lead, while Wisconsin politicos are leaving the Great Lakes vulnerable without the protections of the pending Great Lakes Compact.
The Great Lakes Governors have urged presidential candidates to make Great Lakes cleanup and preservation a national campaign issue.
Sounds like a good idea, presumably to put the Great Lakes region front-and-center in the debate, and in policy-making priority, should a pro-Great Lakes candidate win a party nomination, or the presidency.
The Governors want to know what the candidates' plans are for the Great Lakes. Good question - - but what if the candidates turn that right around and ask the Governors and legislative leaders in the region the same question?
So best be careful about you wish for: there are surely candidates from parched areas (New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate, has already done it, albeit clumsily, suggesting that Wisconsin was "awash in water") who believe that the Great Lakes should be shared nationally - - and won't escape noticing that only two of the eight Great Lakes states have approved the pending Compact since the draft was completed in 2005.
Two of eight? Who's scared of a team batting .250?
Based on performance and outcomes, maybe Great Lakes protection isn't such a pressing issue for the Governors and legislatures in the region after all, if all they can muster after two years come December 13 is a two-for-eight performance?.
In fact, Wisconsin, among all the eight US Great Lakes states, is the only one without a bill even under discussion - - because an unproductive discussion so far has been dominated by Waukesha County development and property-rights' politics.
The Compact needs a Wisconsin political champion. Michigan seems to have a surplus - - and a bi-partisan group at that.
Better land-use planning that encourages fewer trips by motorists in our car-crazy culture is a key element in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reports the authoritative Urban Land Institute.
The ULI suggests development that is somewhat more compact than the suburban-subdivision-sprawl model - - nothing drastic, just logical - - which would mean more downtown developments like this one in Waukesha, or in Middleton Hills outside Madison, or along the riverfront in Milwaukee, but fewer big-lot projects cut into the Kettle Moraine or rural Dane County, for example, that require a two-mile drive for a quart of milk and a 20-mile ride to work.
Plenty more material at the Congress for the New Urbanism, here.
Some conservatives are begging Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke to challenge Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, but Clarke won't do it, as Barrett has an incumbency, an insurmountable lead in polls and a campaign treasury that will dwarf potential opponents,too.
Clarke barely made it onto the 2004 Mayoral ballot and failed to make it through the primary. His third-place showing, with just 18% of the primary turnout cost Clarke credibility- - even with some opinion-makers who had touted his viability.
Running for Mayor would be a suicide mission for Clarke: expect him to stay on the sidelines but continue to take potshots at Barrett through email screeds and talk show appearances.
The wacky boys over at AM-620 WTMJ's afternoon "Green House" radio show were yukking it up earlier this week about waterboarding.
Here's some of their "waterboarding party" hilarity, pod-casted at the program's website (if a screen prompts asks you, click on the Active-X control button).
Here's the testimony of a former US Navy instructor describing in an AP story why waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, is torture.
"[Instructor Malcolm] Nance described the experience as a "slow motion suffocation" that provides enough time for the subject to consider what's happening:
"Water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel(ing) your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs."
"The victim is drowning," Nance said in materials submitted with his testimony."
Yeah, that's pretty funny stuff - - but in reality, it's another nail in the coffin for the credibility of a once-great radio station whose management has decided that anything inane and preferably rightist - - up to and including the late-night homophobe Michael Savage - - should be beamed our way at 50,000-watt strength.
Mighty WTMJ likes to call itself "the biggest stick in the state," but all I can hear when I listen is "the biggest stiff in the state."
Though she requested that a Wisconsin Judicial Commission investigation be based on written records, a Commission panel has ruled that its ethics probe into State Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler's conduct while she was a Washington County judge will include a public hearing on November 19th.
There's no way that the Commission would have done otherwise, since it has to ensure that Ziegler - - now a top Wisconsin jurist - - doesn't get kid-gloves' treatment when it comes to having law and professional codes applied to her.
That the Commission isn't lowering the case profile suggests that the Commission will eventually recommend discipline against Ziegler - - discipline that will sting.
Background and context here.
Cameron Davis, executive director of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, is the guest blogger this week on the Madison-based Biodiversity Project's Great Lakes Town Hall blog.
That's a good sign: some environmental groups have been slow to graft blogs onto their other web activities, even though younger people are routinely choosing blogs as news and information sources, and traditional print media continues its slow decline.
(Twenty-two recently-announced buyout resignations from the Journal Sentinel newsroom are part of an industry trend, as is major papers' emphasis on internet operations.)
Groups that can't get around to a blogging operation are missing opportunities for fund-raising, membership solicitation, grassroots organizing, genuine interaction with page viewers, added clout with opinion-makers, and an everyday, higher and more effective profile.
I've helped some folks get started, and am always available, right here.
First the House, now the Senate, so Americans will get cleaner water.
The Congress recognized that saving wetlands, restoring the Everglades, repairing water and sewage systems nationally is good public policy.
Pres. George W. Bush, a lavish spender during his first six+ years in office, thought he could galvanize the conservative base with a rare appropriations bill veto, forgetting that conservatives like clean drinking water, too.
There's really nothing else to say. There's no need or value to opining politically on the Appeal Court ruling. We want laws applied equally, reasonably and correctly. When they are not, we want higher courts to step in and do exactly what was done in this case.
Jury instructions are crucial to proceedings. They have to be done right.
Period.
The entire state of Michigan is inside the Great Lakes basin, the only such state, so prevention of Great Lakes water loss has always been a top priority there.
Grassroots pressure is building in Michigan for the adoption of a strong version of the pending Great Lakes Compact: Wisconsin is not yet on board, but may be edging there.
Wisconsin's disgraceful plummet from the summit of environmentalism may have hit rock bottom Wednesday and bounced a bit off the deck when a federal judge ordered the UW and state to bring the downtown campus Charter St. power plant into compliance with federal clean air law.
That had been violated for years: more details here.
What an embarrassment, that our sifting and winnowing and regulating officials decided they didn't need to follow the law.
And what gratitude is owed the Sierra Club for dragging the plant's operators into court so that they stop polluting Dane County's air and water.
This blog reported on the Charter St. violations several times a few months ago. One example is here.
Something of a primer, and worth bookmarking or keeping otherwise, about Lake Superior, from the Ashland Daily Press.
It's good that the US Census Bureau has added 30,000 residents to Milwaukee's officially-estimated population - - but these estimates are notoriously low, so Milwaukee probably has another 20,000 or 30,000 residents to be found and counted in the 2010 census.
I know this from personal experience: during the 2000 census, as Deputy Director of Administration for the City of Milwaukee, I was fortunate to be the city's liaison to the official federal count and the city's contracted supplemental effort to find people that the census-takers routinely overlook.
Milwaukee's history is that the official estimates come in low, then the official count is completed, and the count exceeds the most recent estimate by about 30,000 people.
The official census takers are hard-working people, but often were from out-of-state and not completely motivated to canvass neighborhoods and housing units as completely as possible.
Federal estimating methodology, at least in 2000, was archaic and inflexible, and canvassers had inadequate technology in the field.
The city's supplemental efforts, particularly in immigrant communities paid off, and aggressive municipalities do better in this arena than do the passive: appealing existing estimates is a good strategy, and I am sure the city will again spend the dollars it needs, prior to and during the 2010 census, to assist the local federal count.
Congressional representation, federal funds, fair play and an accurate assessment of ourselves as a community lie in the balance.
The New Berlin chapter of Citizens for Responsible Government enlisted State Sen. Mary Lazich to find out just why the Wisconsin DNR secretary was not responding to an important letter from the New Berlin Common Council.
You know how government bureaucracies are, especially that DNR...dragging its feet, dissing the citizenry...so CRG got Sen. Lazich on the case, and she found out why.
Turns out the letter had been sent to one John Welcher, who is not the DNR secretary.
The CRG in New Berlin has decided to put all this on a blog, here.
Here is the key paragraph, and no, I am not making this up:
"Mary Lazich was informed on November 5, 2007 that Mr Welcher was NOT the Secretary of the DNR. The letter was not forwarded to the secretary in any case. At the present time the letter has not been located."
For the record, the DNR secretary is Matt Frank. The DNR website list no employee named John Welcher.
Mayor Richard Daley and the city's business leadership are collaborating on a multi-billion program to further green the city, save energy and transform the city's appearance and transportation system, according to the lead story in Tuesday's Chicago Tribune.
A few key paragraphs:
"The idea is to coordinate large government outlays with private investment and reduce total annual emissions of carbon dioxide -- the key greenhouse gas -- 25 percent from 1990 levels, according to interviews and planning documents for the "Chicago Climate Action Plan," obtained by the Tribune.
"To achieve those goals, though, the plan would require an investment of $2.7 billion in transportation improvements at a time when the CTA has repeatedly floated "doomsday" budget-cut scenarios. The planning also takes place against the backdrop of city and county tax increases, and Daley's own record of falling short on prior efforts to help Chicago go "green."The plan also includes a proposal to coax owners of existing homes to spend a total of $1.65 billion through 2010 in a push to reduce their energy consumption 30 percent. To do that, the city would provide programs aimed at reducing homeowners' out-of-pocket expenses, said Sadhu Johnston, Daley's deputy chief of staff and co-chairman of the mayoral task force."
Compare that to what is happening here: some modest environmental planning, with progress in both Milwaukee and Waukesha's downtowns, but when it comes to a big picture, including transit, even for discussion purposes: virtually nothing.
Here there is political gridlock on transit expansion and a suburban-led love affair with sprawl that is fed by talk radio and suburban fear. And is further reinforced by a highway-expansion mentality at the regional planning commission that is fomenting a $6.5 billion freeway plan, even as existing transit withers.
All based on saving commuters a few minutes with their daily commutes, relying on driving predictions pegged to gasoline at an outdated price $2.30 a gallon, without an iota of concern for what our addiction to driving is doing to the planet and our economy.
Worse, the political and business leadership in the region continues to press for more suburban growth at the expense of urban areas, further distancing themselves from contemporary planning and design, such as the Chicago model, which recognizes that a city is the center of the northern Illinois economy.
Even reduced to scale, what the movers and shakers are discussing and planning for Chicago isn't happening in this region and state on any significant level.
Could happen, should happen, but won't, without a commitment to big ideas, real change, risk-taking, and genuine private sector leadership that is aimed at growing the city and not just water-and-auto-dependent suburbs.
With a simple registration, you can cancel catalogue deliveries to your address using this website.
And as the catalogues come poring into the mailbox during the holiday overspending season, you can go the website and cancel new or unexpected catalogues on the spot.
A hat tip to Dan from New York for this most excellent link.
When the Senate does the same Wednesday, Congress will have succeeded in funding a national water systems' improvement spending package and overridden a thoughtless presidential veto at the same time.
Imagine if the Congress had enough backbone to take charge of the war in Iraq or through any number of bills to restablish Constitutional government in the country?
James Widgerson lets his readers huff and puff about the cigarette tax increase.
It all began on the blog The Other Side Of My Mouth, which looked at so-called smoker's rights. An excellent post, by the way.
Alot of the debate there on Widgerson's site is choked in ideology, and avoids the health side of the issue, which should be the major focus.
Government regulates hundreds of toxic substances, from lead in gasoline to pesticides in food - - on behalf of the public interest.
Tobacco is a proven killer and its effects waft on to non-smokers, passersby, and so forth.
If it were up to me, I'd keep raising the tax because studies show it deters younger would-be smokers, and that's a good thing all around.
And I'd ban smoking in any public place or around minors.
If people want to smoke, they can do it in the privacy of their own space.
Seems like Superior needs a dose of New Urbanism, according to one local preservationist there.
Or at least some planning with some soul and a sense of place - - things Kuntsler preaches about.
Expanding the size six-fold of the Murphy Oil refinery there sounds like another step away from honoring that city's unique, lakefront qualities.
Balanced Transportation: You want the details?
Gretchen Schuldt and storyhill.net tell you all you need to know about state transportation plans in the 2007-09 budget that the legislature completed and sent to Gov. Jim Doyle for a signature.
Significant for Milwaukee is a two-year prohibition against expanding I-94 over the national veterans cemetery on the south side of the interstate just west of Miller Park.
The transportation department, as part of the regional planning commission's $6.5 billion freeway reconstruction and expansion proposal, would like to build elevated lanes between Miller Park and the Story Hill neighborhood, where several cemeteries, including Wood National, are hard by the interstate.
The budget also ramps up spending on two more pieces of the I-94 corridor when the Marquette Interchange project is finished in 2008.
This includes money to begin the south segment from the airport to the state line, and also to fast-track reconstruction, lane and ramp expansion in the Zoo Interchange near the Milwaukee/Waukesha County line, where I-894 and State Highway 45 connect with I-94.
Demands to include planning for the Zoo Interchange while the southern leg nearer the Illinois border were included in the budget as a sop to Republican legislators, whose constituents are being sold on the idea that all this freeway reconstruction and expansion will actually knock off about four minutes from their daily commutes to Milwaukee.
WisDOT's website cautions, of course, that no decisions have been made about the design and other elements of the Zoo Interchange project, reminding me of former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist's observation that there were only two phases to Wisconsin highway projects.
"Too early to know" was phase one.
"Too late to do anything about it" was phase two.
All in all, the highway lobby made out like a bandit in the state budget, while transit got crumbs - - bringing to mind another Norquist observation about 'balanced' transportation policy in Wisconsin.
"Balanced transportation in Wisconsin," he said, "is half concrete, half asphalt."
MSNBC has been smart to feature the witty and outspoken Keith Olbermann, and adding more liberal commentary would be welcome.
Details here.
And if the moves include dumping Tucker Carlson - - great. He can move over to Fox where he belongs.
As to Rosie O'Donnell: I don't know...isn't there an alternative?
US Marine Corps veteran Bill Christofferson, the blogger known as Xoff, is bringing his storied political energies to the movement to end the War in Iraq.
Details on his blog.
Get involved, or send a check, or both.
John Gurda brings a fresh perspective to his ongoing Milwaukee chronicles, tracing the downtown and riverfront's history on a downtown canoe trip.
Worth a read.
I was out of town and off-line for a few days, so I turned off the comment moderation function as a service to readers. Big mistake, as spammers got comments posted.
I have deleted these, and have turned the moderation function back on. Not much choice.
In that process I inadvertently deleted a comment this morning from someone posting as Dan Collins. I have copied it out and posted it where it was intended - - in the "LA Times..." posting: You are free if you would like to resend it.
Over and out.
Until there is a firm deal for an upscale mall, no I-94 interchange will be built to its site at Pabst Farms, in Western Waukesha County.
This is the latest pledge from the powers that be - - the county, the state and Pabst Farms' owners - - in the wake of the first mall upscale mall developer's withdrawal from the project.
Here are the key paragraphs from the Journal Sentinel story linked above, which begs the question: just what is a "high-quality regional shopping mall." or do you merely know one when you see it?
"Funding for the interchange is contingent on development of a large, high-quality regional shopping mall.
"Retail industry insiders have speculated that Pabst Farms and local officials might have to scale back their vision for a grand shopping mall at Pabst Farms and settle for a cluster of so-called big-box stores - huge, free-standing buildings, each with its own massive parking lot, such as a Wal-Mart.
"But Mayor Maury Sullivan has said the city will not allow big-box stores to replace the mall. And Allison Bussler, chief of staff to Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, said a big-box development would not meet the county's criteria for release of its funds for the interchange project.
"'Certainly, there won't be county funds if that's the proposal," Bussler said."
But let's not get too giddy assuming that either grassroots' environmentalism and conservative spending had reasserted themselves to slow up the interchange 'schedule', since:
I suspect that the announcement about the perhaps delayed interchange - - and I say perhaps because we all know that the state transportation department is just itching to get that far western segment of I-94's future expansion jump-started - - is as much PR as it is economics.
After all, Waukesha County is tax-rebellion country: spending tax money to serve one special interest, upscale or not, might not be how the good folks over at Citizens for Responsible Government want their gas and property revenues used.
2008 is an election year for the locals: how tightly tied to "upscale" and "private" do they really want their campaigns to appear?
So don't be surprised if the next plan for that mall site gets labeled "upscale," or "regional," even if it's just a gussied up Wal-Mart or Home Depot, or a collection of undistinguished buildings that ain't much more than what we used to call a shopping center, or just "the mall."
The bellwether event for diverting Great Lakes water from the boundaries of its basin looks like Waukesha, WI, according to the Los Angeles Times.
That's what Wisconsin activists, and this blog, have been saying repeatedly: if a community like Waukesha is allowed to divert water outside of the Great Lakes basin - - in contravention of the standards in the pending Great Lakes Compact or existing federal law (the US Water Resources Development Act) - - the door opens wide to farther-away communities and the US south and southwest.
This is the reason that a Wisconsin elected official like State Sen. Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin) wants to bottle up the Compact by sending it into additional negotiations - - stalling reduces the legal protections against ill-conceived diversions, something Lazich shortsightedly thinks helps her constituents - - even though in the longer run it could cost New Berlin and all of the Great Lakes region its vital water supplies.
The Great Lakes region, long dissed as the rust belt, is on the verge of a waterborne renaissance. Industry and residents are poised to locate close to the Great Lakes, where water is in ample supply - - if it is managed conserved, respected and stewarded effectively.
Waukesha has sent mixed signals when it comes to whether a diversion application would include returning water - - a requirement in the pending Compact, and without it, likely grounds for rejection under the Compact and existing federal law.
In 2006, Waukesha twice confidentially asked Gov. Jim Doyle to grant it diversions of Lake Michigan water without the consent of the other Great Lakes states and without a return flow requirement.
Gov. Doyle did not approve the requests and the Attorney General later that year said the state could not grant any diversion requests from Wisconsin communities that did not pass muster under the pending Compact and existing federal law.
In recent statements, Waukesha officials have said the city would return diverted water to the Lake Michigan basin - - but where and how (is the Root River route acceptable to Racine and other downstream communities?) are unanswered questions. Waukesha has also indicated that the return of water might be only a partial practice, as Waukesha wants to retain its treatment facility that now empties into the Fox River and helps keep the Vernon Marsh wet.
Whether partial return flow would meet the Compact's standards, and win approvals from the other states as required by both the Compact and federal law, is iffy at best.
And the Metropolitan Milwaukee Sewerage District would have to give its blessing to any return flow scheme that added to its capacity downstream from Waukesha.
Some discussion of these issues appears in the comment section of a related blog item, here, initiated by "Bill."
All the more reason that Wisconsin needs to get busy with adoption of a strong Great Lakes Compact implementing bill that lays out conservation requirements and other actions that make diversions genuine exceptions, not matters of sprawl-accelerating convenience in Waukesha County or anywhere in southeastern Wisconsin.
Powerful images. Make sure you click through all eleven photos.
Another Wisconsin organization, Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers, has reiterated its support for the adoption of a strong version of the Great Lakes Compact, according to Lynn Broaddus, the group's executive director.
Public officials across the state Tuesday held news conferences in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Bayfield to again urge the legislature to adopt a bill to implement the historic, eight-state, two-Canadian province agreement.
The Compact, crucial in an era of rising temperatures and depleted water supplies, including falling levels in the Great Lakes, would require effective conservation measures and public input prior to any diversion of water from the boundaries of Lake Michigan, Lake Superior or the other three Great Lakes' basins.
Illinois and Minnesota have already ratified the Compact. All eight Great Lakes states must do the same, along with the US Congress, before its protections for the Great Lakes take effect.
Wisconsin is the only state without a bill approved or pending.
Midwest Environmental Advocates, a Wisconsin public interest law firm with water experts on its staff, strongly criticized State Sen. Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin) for continuing to oppose Wisconsin's adoption of the Great Lakes Compact.
Lazich is pursuing a strategy to delay Wisconsin's adoption of the Compact: details and her position are here.
Lazich said again on Thursday that she wants the Compact renegotiated - - an unlikely path - - because it has been approved by Illinois and Minnesota, was five years in the crafting and has been under discussion by state legislatures across the Great Lakes region since December, 2005.
Continuing his effort to drive down his approval rate to 0%, and push the GOP to permanent minority status, Pres. George W. Bush today vetoed national spending on water system improvements, including flood control and wetlands restoration.
Maybe the Congress can't override his veto of expanded child health insurance, but look for the water projects veto to be overridden.
Even Republicans legislators need improvements in their drinking water, sewage treatment and flood control systems.
Another goof, another miscommunication, or a lot more willful indifference - - call it what you will - - but kiss goodbye some habitat along the Milwaukee River in Glendale, north of Milwaukee.
And don't expect any tough action from the Wisconsin DNR: it's not the agency's practice.
Thanks to Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers for raising the alarm.
State Sen. Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin), is at it again, declaring in an online suburban newspaper column her opposition to the Great Lakes Compact.
The full text is here.
Lazich claims the City of Milwaukee is practicing "extortion" by saying it will not sell Lake Michigan water to a portion of New Berlin that is outside of the Great Lakes basin until the Compact is ratified.
How is that extortion, which, by the way, in common usage has a felonious, legal definition, and libel suits have been filed for far less unpleasantness that suggesting that someone is a criminal.
Furthermore, Milwaukee's position is completely logical and legal: the Compact sets in place formal Great Lakes diversion procedures that are designed to standardize that process, minimize diversions, encourage conservation and preserve the Great Lakes.
A state that jumps the gun and approves a diversion before the Compact has been adopted by all parties runs the risk of either a) triggering a wholesale rush in other states for diversions without standards, or b) a veto of a community's application by one of the other Great Lakes, since unanimous approvals by all eight Great Lakes states is already required by a 1986 federal law and by the Compact itself.
Lazich seems to be the only one in Wisconsin who cannot grasp these simple facts, along with a state legislator in Ohio whose flimsy property-rights opposition to the Compact was shot down by Wisconsin's DNR months ago as irrelevant to Wisconsin law.
Lazich knows that because she forwarded the Ohioan's arguments to the state study committee that met for a year and failed to draft a Compact bill - - in part due to Lazich's obstructionism - - and the DNR told the study committee in writing that the Ohio argument sent its way by Lazich had no merit for Wisconsin.
Here is the DNR's statement, which has been posted on a state website for months, and it contains key phrases like "incorrect interpretations" and "no relevance."
Lazich knows that sending back the Compact for renegotiation is a way to kill it. The negotiations that created it over a five-year period could not be duplicated, and every day that the Compact is delayed is a day of peril for the Great Lakes.
Furthermore, the Compact negotiations produced a compromise package that included diversion exceptions, permissions and procedures specifically carved out for communities like New Berlin and Waukesha that were not included in the first draft of the Compact called Annex 2001.
So New Berlin and Waukesha have already won a crucial victory: all they need to do to apply for water is to follow the rules, and all Wisconsin has to do is adopt them.
Lazich doesn't want to do that, and still wants Waukesha County communities to be able to take Lake Michigan water - - a shared, internationally-managed resources - - away from the Great Lakes basin, and calls other people extortionist?
Finally: the old newspaper reporter and editor in me has to highlight her claim that Milwaukee's position is a "shot across the bough" to the suburbs.
"[Milwaukee Alderman Michael] Murphy’s blunt statement is a direct shot across the bough, a clear indication that the city of Milwaukee doesn’t have any intention of assisting communities like New Berlin or Waukesha in dealing with their need for water," she says.
The term references naval tactics - - a cannon shot "across the bow" was a way that a naval vessel could warn a ship to stop. The bow is the front of a ship.
A shot "across the bough" presumably flies over a branch, perhaps during a squirrel hunt.
Could it be that Lazich knows she is barking up that wrong tree, the one that gets in the way of seeing the rest of the forest?
Foreign policy guru and morality expert Mark Belling opined Thursday afternoon on his WISN-AM 1130 talk radio show that Congressional opponents of water-boarding suffered from "true moral depravity."
Talk about talk radio at its absolute worst.
He also said that the Bush administration was nearly as bad as the Democrats for "hemming and hawing" on the subject, rather than flat-out supporting water boarding as a legal interrogation tactic that saves lives.
Water boarding, which Vice-President Dick Cheney has endorsed as a post-9/11 "no-brainer" for him, was described this way by ABC News:
"The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt."
Of course, respect for the Geneva Convention banning torture has also been a way for the US to protect its soldiers should they be captured, but it sounded like Belling hadn't had that part of the briefing.
And the more that the US justifies using torture tactics like water boarding, along with warrantless wire-tapping, secret courts and the like, the more that terrorists are having their way with us and our democratic traditions.
Throwing that away is real moral depravity, yet there's little surprise in finding Belling as the spokesman and apologist for Dick Cheney No-Brainers.
Remember when Gov. Jim Doyle's administration was signing up Wisconsin students who could maintan at least a "B" average in high school for a guaranteed spot in a Wisconsin college or university - - and Republicans said the program was an empty promise?
Wisconsin philanthropists have now come forward with a $40 million privately-pledged endowment to get the Wisconsin Covenant program off the ground.
Private money...spurring educational commitment...keeping good kids in schools...making college a wider reality...expanding workforce development...stimulating the economy: that kind of success has got to be hard for some GOP talkers and pols to swallow, even though it is precisely the kind of public policy innovation that any political party in Wisconsin should embrace.
State government and business leaders tout Wisconsin's "Green Tier" program that gives environmentally-sensitive companies the right to slap the "Green Tier" label on their materials.
But the program has some problems.
Environmental attorney Melissa Scanlan has the story, here.
Noted music critic and feminologist Mark Belling opined Wednesday afternoon that while Joan Baez used to have a great voice, he had less appreciation for her now because of her ridiculous messages and "old bag" status.
That is not an Onion headline. A fight over garden-watering in drought-ravaged Australia takes a life.
