So State Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler decided to write off loans she made to her campaign, essentially converting $823,000 to a donation.
I guess that establishes the market rate for a Supreme Court seat.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution bemoans its risk-averse leaders who won't follow more visionary cities' transit planning.
Amazing, isn't it, that those visionary cities are Houston and Phoenix - - once conservative bastions now on the cutting edge of light rail expansion, through local taxation.
I used to think that the main Milwaukee - - Atlanta connection was our sharing a baseball franchise.
Now I see that cities have something else in common - - we're both entering the era of expensive gasoline with inadequate transit.
You hear it on talk radio all the time: No one will ride the train, blah blah blah.
Except...Amtrak is setting records between Milwaukee and Chicago.
Now imagine for a moment that you could ride the light rail from Brookfield or UW-M or King Drive, transfer at the InterModal station downtown, and continue on to Chicago via Amtrak, or south on the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter line?
Oh...I forgot...that wouldn't work here, because no one will ride the train.
When Pennsylvania becomes the eighth and last Great Lakes state to approve the Great Lakes Compact, the agreement moves to Congress for final US approval.
The AP is following the story, here.
In a lengthy story, (fair warning) the Edmonton, Canada, Sun newspaper details problems with national and provincial water supply usage, pricing, and managment.
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee professor Marc Levine explains in an absolutely essential Journal Sentinel Crossroads op-ed that the Milwaukee regional economy will go from bad to worse as gas prices spike without immediate modern transit investments - - including light rail - - like those now that have been made or are being planned in nearly every other major city in America.
Note the editorial position a day earlier in The Freeman, Waukesha's daily paper, that endorsed:
A) The permanent erasure of light rail from regional transportation consideration.
B) The deliberate absence of Waukesha County's participation in a regional transit authority because it mostly helped Milwaukee.
C) The value in an op-ed it ran on June 18th by Mark Belling, the conservative AM radio talk show host, who opined that bus riders were "fringe" people.
In other words: 'Milwaukee: Up Yours,' or as Freeman columnist Pete Kennedy said about a year ago in that paper, "Milwaukee Sucks."
The key policy paragraphs from The Freeman editorial (full text here):
"First of all, while we are fine with regional partnerships and cooperation, we remain firmly against Waukesha County being part of a regional transit authority.
"It doesn’t make sense and is not in the interest of Waukesha County residents is to establish a regional transit authority that has the power to raise your taxes and will have aims that mostly benefit Milwaukee.
***
"In regard to mass transit, all efforts that affect Waukesha County should be based on automobiles and buses.
"The idea of light rail should be derailed for good. It just isn’t practical.
"The expense and inflexibility of such a system are deal breakers. Instead the focus should be on buses.
"We could potentially see a future where someone opts to go downtown Milwaukee via a hybrid doubledecker bus instead of a car.
"But if that doesn’t happen and no one uses the buses, at least there won’t be all kinds of expensive light rail tracks going unused."
This is the same disregard-and-weaken approach that Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission imposed on Milwaukee when the agency recommended widening freeways through land, tax base, homes and businesses in Milwaukee - - regardless of the majority votes in objections by the Milwaukee County Board and Common Council.
And the Common Council has extended its anti-freeway widening with a more recent vote against adding lanes from Milwaukee to the Illinois line, but in favor of adding the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line, instead.
WisDOT brushed aside that proposal, knowing it had in hand the original SEWRPC freeway plan, for which it paid SEWRPC $1 million to craft.
SEWRPC will soon recommend what Waukesha interests have been seeking for years as the crown jewel for future county development - - diversions of Lake Michigan water through Milwaukee's water works to new subdivisions on formerly rural land.
This will continue to accelerate the movement of capital and jobs from Milwaukee to areas not served by the very modern regional transit that Levine defines as crucial for the region's success.
Waukesha's parsing of the language of regionalism, (we're for regional cooperation even when we're not), its cherry-picking among regional initiatives to support (water, yes; transit, no), and its embrace of Belling keeps sending a negative message to Milwaukee.
This will only encourage Milwaukee to think twice before agreeing to transfer city resources like water, or a contribution to SEWRPC's operating budget ($400,000 this year, but without a city vote on the agency board, as I have pointed out) to the very suburban areas and decision-makers that have so little regard for the city.
Waukesha leaders (that business conference sponsored last week in Waukesha where toll roads for Wisconsin got a big sloppy wet kiss) should really begin to think through the ramifications of their positions on regional water/development/transportation issues.
Do they understand that dump-on-Milwaukee rhetoric, and policy directions that block the city's development will inevitably encourage Milwaukee to look elsewhere for supportive partners?
Such as the more urbanized Racine and Kenosha counties, and to Chicago, where there are certainly larger numbers of "fringe" people.
I got severely criticized a couple of weeks ago when I suggested that Milwaukee opt out of the Southeastern Wisconsin Planning Commission, SEWRPC, being told that I was undermining regional cooperation.
I argued the commission didn't operate in Milwaukee's interest.
But now along comes The Freeman, Waukesha's daily paper, along with some area public officials, who want Waukesha County to stay out of a cooperative, regional body - - the Regional Transportation Authority, or RTA, which is working across the region to try and rationalize transit services.
The Freeman argues that the RTA isn't in Waukesha County's interest.
Hmmm...
The Freeman also got in a good kick at light rail because the paper sees it as only benefiting Milwaukee - - which, the last time I checked, is the biggest city in the most populous county in the region, let alone the whole darn state.
Will the editorial result in an uproar over disrespect for regionalism? Will there be concern about a lack of cooperation with the City of Milwaukee, or the counties in the RTA - - Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee County - - and its mutual mission?
No.
Here is The Freeman editorial and related material from the paper, which also praises Mark Belling and rips toll roads:
Waukesha County should stay out of regional transit authority
– Freeman editorial board
Waukesha Freeman
June 28, 2008
Regional leaders, including some from Waukesha County, were involved in several discussions this week to discuss regional transportation issues.
The Waukesha County Action Network held talks about funding transportation and regional leaders attended a summit in Milwaukee to discuss transportation and mass transit.
We’d like to address a few items that came up during the discussions:
First of all, while we are fine with regional partnerships and cooperation, we remain firmly against Waukesha County being part of a regional transit authority.
It doesn’t make sense and is not in the interest of Waukesha County residents is to establish a regional transit authority that has the power to raise your taxes and will have aims that mostly benefit Milwaukee.
***
In regard to mass transit, all efforts that affect Waukesha County should be based on automobiles and buses.
The idea of light rail should be derailed for good. It just isn’t practical.
The expense and inflexibility of such a system are deal breakers. Instead the focus should be on buses. We could potentially see a future where someone opts to go downtown Milwaukee via a hybrid doubledecker bus instead of a car.
But if that doesn’t happen and no one uses the buses, at least there won’t be all kinds of expensive light rail tracks going unused.
***
Here’s the best idea that came up during the discussions this week:
“Maybe we have to just leave Waukesha County out of the RTA now and once they see how well it works, hope they’ll be clamoring to get in.” – state Rep. Jeff Stone, R-Greendale.
Don’t count on too much clamoring from out west, Jeff. But, yes, leave Waukesha County out of it.
***
Here’s the worst idea that came up this week, this one from another transportation panel:
Transportation experts said Wisconsin needs to implement toll roads because the state doesn’t have enough money for road repair and construction in the region. Just think, all those taxes you pay and there still isn’t enough to fix our roads.
By the way, is there really anything about Illinois that we want to emulate?
***
There’s a buzzword that was floating around the discussions this week: NEGATIVITY.
Leaders repeatedly referenced Mark Belling’s recent Freeman column critical of mass transit. But instead of taking his opinion into consideration, many of the leaders chalked it up to the NEGATIVE climate surrounding the regional transit issue.
This dismissive attitude from some of these leaders toward those who oppose a regional transit authority is arrogant and condescending.
The reason there is negativity toward a regional transit authority is because it is a bad idea that would cost taxpayers a lot of money. Of course, we realize we will now be labeled as part of the NEGATIVE alliance against light rail and high taxes. We can live with that.
***
There certainly can be some good that comes from all of these leaders getting together.
We call on Waukesha Mayor Larry Nelson and Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas to continue the discussion but to stand up for Waukesha County’s best interests.
Those interests do not include getting roped into a regional transit authority.
Instead, let’s try a different approach.
Let’s find a way to get the most out of the connections being made with other regional leaders through these discussions. There is a need to think regionally. There’s no doubt about that.
But the best way to go is for the communities to find common ground as neighbors, not join together to create a new transit system.
Dave Dempsey proposes a citizen panel on water policy in Michigan to address gaps in state policy, and also with regard to the Great Lakes Compact there, too.
Wisconsin activists should consider something similar.
Wisconsin is continuing to press forward with billions of dollars in new highway construction ( 120 miles of new freeway lanes alone in the seven southeastern Wisconsin counties, as part of a $6.5 billion rebuild and expansion scheme) though story-after-story and fact-after-fact suggest - - actually scream - - that driving is declining as gasoline prices keep spiking.
An OPEC official is quoted this weekend predicting $170-per-barrel oil in six months.
Nationally we need a Marshall Plan or NASA-level initiative focused on transportation to make sure that we have decent transit within a relatively short time frame.
Wisconsin and the midwest states need their piece, as does Milwaukee, where the largest number of low-income people live.
If we had a state transportation department or regional planning commission that were run merely by realists, not psychic futurists, these agencies would have already begun to hold public listening sessions to respond to this new paradigm with transit planning driven by public input.
Instead, the transportation department is rushing the start of eight years of work on I-94 from Milwaukee to Illinois at a cost of $1.9 billion, without funding a parallel commuter rail line.
The plan was hatched a few years ago by the regional planning commission (SEWRPC) that used traffic predictions with gasoline costing about $2.50-a-gallon.
Now that things have changed drastically, is there any organized effort to begin to gather any opinion from the grassroots? Anyone at the state or regional levels interested in opinions from everyday people about what direction our transportation planning should be heading?
Anyone?
Hello?
As I thought.
I've refocused an earlier post with a link to what may be the all-time Milwaukee GoofyTime AM radio talk show soundbite.
Here was the setting:
Gov. Jim Doyle's task force on global warming reached some common ground and produced a set of recommendations.This required some analysis on talk radio, so as AM 1130 WISN rightie talker Vicki McKenna led into the break at 11:30 Friday morning, she denounced environmental supporters of such anti-global warming actions as "evil people."
Then amplified the description as "evil, evil people," among "the most evil people" ever, who "want to kill us, I swear to God, they want us dead."
She then told her audience she was going to drive around in her 10-year-old Chevy Silverado truck and think up more arguments against global warming.
Link to her second hour Friday, June 27th podcast, at the 20 minute mark and listen until the segment ends in less than two-and-a-half minutes.
So it goes on Milwaukee's ubiquitous AM conservative talk radio stations.
The story of Epic Systems' dispute with the right-wing political spending by the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) seems to have legs.
Ol' Belling was in full rightie talkie mode today, cackling over recordings used to help Ald. Mike McGee essentially convict himself in federal court.
McGee has been great fodder for certain talkers and bloggers, and Belling has loved every minute of it.
Makes you wonder: what will these talkers do for a foil once McGee is completely gone from the scene?
Add road capacity, says Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas.
I suppose he's down with that tolling idea rolled out the other day by SEWRPC's executive director, Phil Evenson.
Seems like Waukesha County is ground zero of the tax-and-spend more movement.
Anti-rail zealots who railed against rail used to derisively call John Norquist's proposed light rail equipment "choo-choo trains."
Now they are giving the treatment to Tim Sheehy, executive director of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce.
Sheehy has had the temerity to back commuter rail - - not trolley-like light rail in the City of Milwaukee - - serving suburban communities from Milwaukee to Racine to Kenosha because it would move people and create development along the route.
For that, Sheehy earns a mocking.
Gov. Jim Doyle's task force on global warming reached some common ground and produced a set of recommendations.
This required some analysis on talk radio, so as AM 1130 WISN rightie talker Vicki McKenna led into the break at 11:30 Friday morning, she denounced environmental supporters of such anti-global warming actions as "evil people."
Then amplified the description as "evil, evil people," among "the most evil people" ever, who "want to kill us, I swear to God, they want us dead."
She then told her audience she was going to drive around in her 10-year-old Chevy Silverado truck and think up more arguments against global warming.
Think I am making this up?
Link to her second hour Friday, June 27th podcast, at the 20 minute mark and listen until the segment ends in less than two-and-a-half minutes.
So it goes on Milwaukee's ubiquitous AM conservative talk radio stations.
Businesses keep dropping away from the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce as they realize their dues are being spent on reactionary politics that are not in Wisconsin's best interests.
A leading Wisconsin high-tech business, Epic Systems, Verona, ratchets up the pressure, declining to do business with firms that are WMC members.
Wisconsin Democracy Coalition takes note, too.
Conservative third-party ads from the WMC and other organizations were featured in the recent State Supreme Court election, where conservative challenger Burnett County Circuit Court Judge Michael Gableman unseated incumbent Justice Louis Butler.
After the race, a WMC board member resigned after receiving a letter of complaint from a consumer; projects by One Wisconsin Now, Milwaukee, and another by former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin are carrying out progressive educational efforts statewide about the WMC and its activities.
Some information about One Wisconsin Now (I am on one of its boards) and the WMC effort is here.
Soglin has some interesting background to report, too, here.
There are few business with more of a signature presence and value to the Milwaukee area than Midwest Airlines, making the company's announcement of substantial layoffs, equipment reductions and related trims all the more disturbing.
Spiraling fuel costs will continue to wreak havoc on the economy as it adjusts, if that is the right word, to oil prices that will not quit spiking.
A fundamentally crippled Midwest Airlines, or worse, a hometown service folded invisibly into a larger corporate parent would be a tremendous financial and psychological blow to Milwaukee.
Former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist explains to a CNN audience why commuting costs in this era of costly gasoline are making homes in cities and close-in suburbs better deals for buyers than those in more distant communities.
Norquist's organization, the Congress for the New Urbanism, has posted information about commuting costs and housing values on its website, here.
The climate change deniers will have a tough time with this one.
The Freeman generously allowed me op-ed space in its edition today to raise some of the regionalism issues I've discussed on this blog.
Here is the text: [Update: I need to correct or amplify two points. First: Where I reference "core staff" at SEWRPC, the correct term is "management staff," meaning the eleven senior positions only. This was a misunderstanding on my part of SEWRPC terminology. Secondly, where I say that the Milwaukee County Board and Common Council voted against new freeway lanes, I needed to say more precisely that those votes were against adding new in the City of Milwaukee only]
GUEST OPINION
Milwaukee gets second-class treatment from SEWRPC
Despite public funding, agency fails to represent its population base
By JAMES ROWEN
(James Rowen has written for newspapers and served as a senior mayoral staffer in Madison and Milwaukee. His blog can be found at http://www.thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com)
Milwaukee County and its largest jurisdiction, the city of Milwaukee, should withdraw from the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission and create a new organization to better serve a big city.
And while we’re talking about reforms to SEWRPC, a healthy dose of sunlight on its spending and decision-making would help taxpayers across its seven-county region better assess SEWRPC’s performance – not just for Milwaukee, but your town and wallet, too.
First, some numbers (rounded-off):
Using 2007 official estimates, Milwaukee County’s 951,000 residents total 47.5 percent of the region’s population of 2,003,000.
But because each SEWRPC county has three seats on its 21-member board, Milwaukee County has only 14 percent (one-seventh) of the board seats.
It gets worse.
The city of Milwaukee, with 603,000 residents, gets none of the SEWRPC board seats because of the county-only appointment procedure.
That’s the situation even though Milwaukee’s city population exceeds each of all six non-Milwaukee County SEWRPC counties – ranging from Waukesha County’s 379,300 people to Walworth County’s 85,600.
And even more discriminatory:
City of Milwaukee taxpayers transferred $396,000 in property tax dollars to SEWRPC for its current operating budget, while Walworth, Washington, Ozaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties paid between $145,400 to $196,000.
Beginning to see the picture?
Suppose this were Waukesha’s situation. Would that be OK with you, in the name of regionalism?
(In fact, Waukesha County’s contribution to SEWRPC this year of $669,000 was exceeded only by Milwaukee County’s $834,000. Since Waukesha County gets the same number of SEWRPC seats – three – as the less-populated, lesser-paying counties, Waukesha County taxpayers might ask whether SEWRPC is a good deal for them, too.)
For the city of Milwaukee, this is disenfranchised governance, and taxation without representation – circumstances made more unacceptable because no senior, so-called “core staffer” at SEWRPC is a city of Milwaukee resident, or is a minority individual, though most of the region’s minorities live in Milwaukee, where minorities now constitute the majority.
The frequent absence of minorities on SEWRPC’s advisory committees, where much of the agency’s policy development takes place, enhances the belief that SEWRPC has a pro-suburban tilt.
Examples of that suburban orientation:
SEWRPC spent nearly $1 million studying and endorsing adding 120 miles of new freeway lanes in the region at the loss of millions of dollars in Milwaukee taxable property. The plan was opposed by majorities at the Milwaukee Common Council and Milwaukee County Board.
SEWRPC is helping with hurried approvals for a $25 million Interstate 94 interchange to a proposed shopping mall at Pabst Farms in western Waukesha County – even as a far, far less expensive bus line bringing Milwaukee workers to jobs in Waukesha County was eliminated.
SEWRPC has failed since 1975 to write a much-promised regional study about affordable housing. Yet it has spent millions on operations and studies since 1975, including nearly $1 million on the freeway plan, and close to another $1 million on a separate three-year study, now nearly complete, that will likely recommend Lake Michigan water diversions for suburban communities.
Bottom line: Milwaukee’s issues and relationship at SEWRPC have second-class status.
SEWRPC has a budget this year of $7,280,000 made up 100 percent of public dollars, but often behaves less like a public agency, and more like a private business, according to records and interviews.
For example, it selected current SEWRPC Deputy Director Ken Yunker to be executive director beginning in 2009, though did not conduct a search or other public outreach.
SEWRPC bought its current (City of) Pewaukee office building headquarters in 2001 without equivalent consideration of other properties, and agreed to pay $20,000 to Waukesha County for departing early from leased space in the Waukesha County Historical Society and Museum.
SEWRPC pays for public relations services rather than rely on in-house personnel, though it has not yet implemented one proposal from the PR firm: changing the agency name from Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission to Regional Planning Commission of Southeastern Wisconsin.
Conclusion: Though a governmental agency, SEWRPC is tucked away from the population centers of its region, spending public money with little accountability, citizen awareness or taxpayer participation.
The creation of a new urban regional planning commission would be good for Milwaukee; the removal of Milwaukee County’s big annual tax payment might put the brakes on new car spending for staff and some consultants, and bring about other belt-tightening.
A new commission, perhaps with additional jurisdictions, could team up with SEWRPC. That would redefine and expand regional cooperation and produce better, more inclusive results.
Planning can and should be energetic, proactive and trendsetting. It should welcome fresh ideas and formats – especially in these challenging times – and make new approaches work for the most people possible.
As constituted and managed, SEWRPC fails that test.
Philip Evenson - - executive director of our regional planning commission (SEWRPC) that supporters claim doesn't commit flagrant acts of advocacy - - told a transportation conference in Waukesha County Tuesday that Wisconsin needs to start collecting some road tolls.
This is not a surprise.
Evenson led the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission through a two-year study that produced a $6.5 billion freeway reconstruction and expansion plan - - but did not recommend a financing mechanism to pay for it.
The study's final report, chapter seven, says the financing is up to the state.
In other words, SEWRPC suggested spending billions over several decades, but said, in effect: 'Financing? Not our problem.'
So the state is forging ahead with a $1.9 billion spending commitment on the not-so-congested I-94 corridor from Milwaukee to Illinois, and has moved up the $400 million or so Zoo Interchange rebuilding, too - - but still can't say where the money is coming from.
Former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist was a member of the freeway study's advisory committee, said at the time the SEWRPC recommendations were flawed because they did not include a financing plan, and voted against it.
Regional and state planners routinely recommend more highway projects than Wisconsin can finance with gas taxes, licensing fees and income tax revenues.
The gap has been as much as $5 billion in recent years, and now that driving is declining, and more-efficient engines are burning less fuel, the road-builders and their allies grasp that state gas tax collections are even less able now to sustain their concrete-and-new-lane building-binge.
Tolls can serve as a mechanism to directly fund transit, or move people towards transit alternatives, but in the Milwaukee area, that means to an already-failing Milwaukee County bus system, or your bike.
I was foolishly hoping that SEWRPC would react to spiking gasoline prices by proposing and planning for transit expansion now, and would also pull back its multi-billion dollar freeway plan that includes 120 miles of new lanes across seven southeastern Wisconsin counties.
SEWRPC should be rethinking the wisdom and sustainability of the exurban sprawl model that its highway and related plans have enabled in this region.
Instead, the agency is going in the opposite direction - - more roads and more capacity - - paid for by taxpayers who would then be asked to pay again to use them through a toll collection system.
Evenson says we need the will in Wisconsin to start charging tolls.
That may play well to the road-builders and assorted Waukesha business leaders who gathered to hear the discussion, but I doubt legislators in either party will come around to a "Be More Like Illinois" motto.
They know if they were to support it, the electoral bell would toll for them.
Another prediction: SEWRPC, perhaps with the libertarian-leaning Reason Foundation that took part in the Waukesha conference will announce a study to examine, merely explore, from an objective perspective, the value of road tolling.
To which Milwaukee County should not pay one thin dime, because Evenson has tipped SEWRPC's hand.
Ironically, Evenson is helping make the case that Milwaukee should get the heck out of SEWRPC and put its regional planning property tax money into studies and recommendations that better serve an urban population that needs more transit.
The Journal Sentinel's Waukesha columnist, Laurel Walker, is a journalistic gem known to tweak the suburbs and the conventional wisdom there.
In this definite classic, Walker today moves from George Carlin to the Milwaukee 7 to seven unassailable truths about her Waukesha world.
Don't miss it.
The US Supreme Court hands ExxonMobil a $2 billion victory; the losers are individuals like fishing boat owners and class-action plaintiffs trying to recover income from the company's infamous oil tanker spill off Alaska in 1989.
Scientists have found that the after-effects have lingered longer than once thought.
The company's website delivers this with a straight face on its website:
"We are committed to meeting the world's growing demand for energy in an economically, environmentally and socially responsible manner."
This, the 17th chapter in an occassional blog series, "The Road To Sprawlville," originates with a story in The New York Times, where one of their western correspondents finds sprawl it in the Denver area - - and having driven through there in the spring of 2006, I can personally say the sprawl developments were jaw-dropping.
Of course, we've got our own Wisconsin examples close by, don't we?
Like Pabst Farms out on 1,500 acres of former farm and prized regional aquifer recharge land in Western Waukesha County.
And other developments throughout Waukesha and other surrounding counties, where homes and subdivisons seem to have fallen out of the sky.
The same goes for subdivisions far out in Dane County, from which commuters poke along on crowded highways to get to their jobs at the State Capitol or the UW-Madison campus.
With gasoline topping $4-a-gallon, Sprawlville is looking far less reasonable, affordable and sustainable than downtown condos or older urban neighborhoods, where you can walk to work, the coffee shop and a theater, too.
One of the silver linings in the gloom over high energy prices and housing woes is that cities will look more attractive, especially to first-time home-buyers.
Regrettably, planners at both the state and regional levels are still forging ahead with billions in new highway construction, while what the public needs is urban and commuter rail.
The executive director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission even suggested earlier this week that we keep this road-building binge flush with cash through toll collections.
My guess is that still won't save Sprawlville, but will take more money out of motorists pockets.
The State of Michigan's legislature finally passed its Great Lakes Compact legislation, so when Gov. Jennifer Granholm inks her signature, Michigan will become the seventh of the eight Great Lakes states to approve the Compact.
All in all, this is a good thing, with the Compact moving one step closer to Congressional approval, and a new level of protection against wholesale diversions.
But noted activist and writer Dave Dempsey describes the shortcomings in Michigan's compromised Compact implementing bill, as business interests hung tough and won some victories during weeks of negotiations.
Nearly the entire state is within the Great Lakes basin, thus industry fought hard to preserve access to supplies with few controls.
Nestle exports water from a wetlands in the state under the phony-baloney "Ice Mountain," and as long as the containers do not exceed 5.7 gallons, the bottle-by-bottle diversion is unlimited.
It's a serious loophole, permitted by the Compact, a flaw that dates back to Michigan's insistence it be included in the Compact's final draft produced by the region's governors and Canadian premiers in 2005.
Environmental and political leaders from both parties in Michigan were also looking for stronger language in the implementing bill to clarify the Public Trust doctrine's protection of Michigan waters.
The doctrine originated in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, prior to statehood, when water rights for all were crucial to commerce, transport and the sustaining of life - - as is certainly the case today.
Wisconsin incorporates the doctrine into its state constitution, and the law and the principle needs to be fought for and protected with every violation, whether it's access to Lake Michigan behind the Summerfest grounds in Milwaukee that is closed during festivals, to the city's riverwalk in downtown Fort Atkinson, where anglers have been shooed off a key stretch for the convenience of new Rock River condo owners.
Fact is - - entrenched industries routinely get served by legislatures, whether for access to water or a thousand other special-interest considerations.
In Wisconsin, the Compact implementing bill approved here made sure, for example, that Lake Superior water would be legally available should Murphy Oil need its projected five million gallons of water daily to operate an expanded refinery in Superior.
So while Michigan adopted a Compact implementing bill that still gives industries too much poorly-regulated access to Great Lakes water, let's not get too high and mighty and attack our neighbor to east.
Wisconsin cut its own deals to keep hometown businesses happy.
Writer and thinker Dennis Phillips offers Parts I and II of a very provocative essay on US and world energy policies.
And the site carrying Phillips' work is a trove of inspired work.
This column from the Chicago Tribune is an indicator.
Those recent heavy rains would have produced less flooding if fewer acres of wetlands have been lost to 'development,' whether wider highways, subdivision streets or commercial businesses' parking lots.
A fine op-ed from the Wisconsin Wetlands Association makes the case.
James Hansen, top NASA climatologist and political target of the Bush administration, returns the favor by urging prosecution of oil executives for spreading disinformation about fossil fuel emissions and climate change.
Hansen favors heavy investments in non-polluting, alternative power sources to directly address climate change.
Hat tip to an excellent source.
Metro Milwaukee Today continues to closely examine SEWRPC and call for change from a suburban viewpoint south of the freeway.
Milwaukee lost one of the really good guys yesterday when Terry Gillick died suddenly at his west side home.
A native son, Terry had had a long career at UWM handling media and marketing relations.
I knew him less through his work and more as a pal at the Downtown YMCA, where he was an evening regular with those of us trying to ward off the hazards of aging.
He was an hilarious storyteller and a font of information, and wry observation, about people and politics.
Emails from Terry routinely came with a verse from Dylan or Springsteen. He was generous and engaging and always upbeat; it's unimaginable that he's so suddenly gone.
My family offers our deepest sympathy to his wife, Terry Perry, their children and large extended families, and networks of friends and colleagues.
What a loss.
The Journal Sentinel's Sunday Crossroads section carries a brace of letters on the growing debate about SEWRPC's value to the City of Milwaukee. Most writers agree that the agency is a bad deal for Milwaukee.
Here is a link to the letters.
I'm glad to see the ratio of letters, and even more happy with the discourse.
SEWRPC - - with its obfuscatory acronym, inaccessible Pewaukee location, and similarly remote website, publications and processes - - has been little known to the general public, but certainly less so these days.
SEWRPC is a 100% taxpayer-financed public agency authorized by the state legislature.
It spends millions of public dollars annually, and as I argued in the Crossroads piece of June 8th that got this discussion going, those dollars are often spent in ways that undervalue Milwaukee, a big city's needs and the best way to consider those needs in a regional context.
Without votes on the SEWRPC board, city property taxpayers this current year who sent more than $400,000 to SEWRPC - - a larger contribution than made by five of SEWRPC's seven entire counties - - are taxed without being represented.
None of the senior, so-called SEWRPC "core staff" are minorities, or even live in the City of Milwaukee, SEWRPC records indicate, thus perpetuating an anti-city, pro-suburban/exurban orientation in the commission's workforce, hence its management and its work products.
Look no farther than its failure to start, let alone study and publish, a recommended housing plan for the region since 1975.
Or the fact that more highway lanes are being designed for the region with SEWRPC's encouragement, but transit in the same region is shrinking even as gas prices spike.
Or that of 32 people on the important SEWRPC water supply advisory committee, where hefty recommendations are coming for Lake Michigan diversions that will push sprawl farther from Milwaukee - - along the widened highway corridors that are often transit-free - - there is but one City of Milwaukee representative, and no people of color, and none representing low-income citizens or communities from which employment might depart and follow the fresh supply of Lake Michigan water.
SEWRPC has been around since 1960, so I think it's time for basic changes there - - and that needs to begin with a restructuring of either the board makeup, or of the commission itself - - to give meaningful voice and fair value to City of Milwaukee residents, priorities and tax dollars.
I appreciated the Journal Sentinel publishing my June 8th op-ed, and the letters chosen June 22nd - - make sure you read Patricia McManus' letter that ties it all up as the last of the letters published - - indicate that I am not the only one in these parts who thinks SEWRPC is a bad deal for Milwaukee.
(Numerous posts on this blog about SEWRPC are available through the search box at the upper left. Just enter SEWRPC.)
In the media and blogging back-and-forth over the worth of the regional planning commission (SEWRPC) to Milwaukee, I've been taken to task by critics and labeled "Milwaukee-centric" (The Freeman) and "urbanist" (Patrick McIlheran)
I take these as compliments.
It's good to be an urbanist: strong cities are hugely beneficial to the economy and the environment.
And "Milwaukee-centric?"
You bet.
If only a little of that would rub off on the critics, and at SEWRPC.
Don't miss Thomas Friedman's biting column on President Bush's "lame" excuse for an energy policy - - here.
Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy the other day observed that SEWRPC - - the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - represents land, not people.
His dead-on remark was an explanation about why SEWRPC's 21-member board of commissioners has three representatives from each of SEWRPC's seven counties, but none from the City of Milwaukee, even though Milwaukee's population exceeds the individual populations of the six, non-Milwaukee Counties.
And I agree with Murphy that it helps explain why SEWRPC endorses highway expansion that is unfolding in the region to the tune of 120 miles of new lanes.
This is why I have been saying for some time that Milwaukee is in a taxation-without-representation circumstance, since City of Milwaukee residents also pay through a property tax levy for SEWRPC an annual share of SEWRPC's operating budget that exceeds the individual payments from five of the other counties, too.
Here is another illustration of SEWRPC's focus on land, rather than people.
Compare the purposes of a regional planning commission's activities in the state stature that created them - - 66.0309 - - with the purpose for that SEWRPC puts at the opening of its homepage at http://www.sewrpc.org/.
To further my point, I am bold-facing broad 'people issues' that the statute says are focus of regional planning in Wisconsin with the language that SEWRPC chooses.
The State Statute:
66.0309(10) (10) Adoption of master plan for region. The master plan shall be made with the general purpose of guiding and accomplishing a coordinated, adjusted and harmonious development of the region which will, in accordance with existing and future needs, best promote public health, safety, morals, order, convenience, prosperity or the general welfare, as well as efficiency and economy in the process of development. The regional planning commission may adopt the master plan as a whole by a single resolution, or, as the work of making the whole master plan progresses, may by resolution adopt a part or parts of the master plan, any part to correspond with one or more of the elements specified in s. 66.1001. The resolution shall refer expressly to the maps, plats, charts, programs and descriptive and explanatory matter, and other matters intended by the regional planning commission to form the whole or any part of the plan, and the action taken shall be recorded on the adopted plan or part of the adopted plan by the identifying signature of the chairperson of the regional planning commission and a copy of the plan or part of the adopted plan shall be certified to the legislative bodies of the local governmental units within the region. The purpose and effect of adoption of the master plan shall be solely to aid the regional planning commission and the local governments and local government officials comprising the region in the performance of their functions and duties.
SEWRPC Home Page:
About the Commission
The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) was established in 1960 as the official areawide planning agency for the highly urbanized southeastern region of the State. The Commission serves the seven counties of Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Walworth, Washington, and Waukesha.
The Commission was created to provide the basic information and planning services necessary to solve problems which transcend the corporate boundaries and fiscal capabilities of the local units of government comprising the Southeastern Wisconsin Region.
Regional planning provides a meaningful technical approach to the proper planning and design of public works systems, such as:
Highways
Transit
Sewerage
Water Supply
Park and Open Space Facilities
A regional approach is also essential for addressing environmental issues, including:
Flooding
Air and Water Pollution
Natural Resource Base Deterioration
Changing Land Use
Think about the difference.
SEWRPC says it focuses on public works and government limitations.
If it had more of a people perspective, it would have more everyday citizens on its advisory committees, giving them credit in SEWRPC's planning for their everyday experiences, and SEWRPC would have advisory committees working on issues like affordable housing, which it has not studied for 1975.
Or why it has finally begun to address the absence of low-income participants from its work - - but only with the creation of an Environmental Justice Task Force that is not a full-fledged advisory committee and is barely plugged into the work of the other SEWRPC committees.
I am sure that SEWRPC considers all its work to be on behalf of people, but the way it goes about it keeps many people away from the table.
The Freeman, Waukesha's daily paper, published an editorial on June 19th backing the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) and dismissing any suggestion there is room for improvement or reform in the agency's structure or operations.
No surprise there. It will play well in Waukesha County, where SEWRPC and its leadership live and work, and will not play well in Milwaukee.
As several of us in the Milwaukee-centric" camp keep noting, City of Milwaukee taxpayers send more money to SEWRPC for annual operations than do five of SEWRPC's seven counties.
For Waukesha and the other counties, Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee are cash cows for SEWPRC.
The more we realize that it's a bad deal for us, and the more we are told the opposite by SEWRPC and its Waukesha beneficiaries, the more frequent will be the calls from Milwaukee for structural and policy changes at the agency.
Here is the editorial's text.
*****
Planners deserve questions - but not of worth
By Freeman editorial board
June 19, 2008
After a flash of opinions and calls-to-arms that have likely received too much validity, some Milwaukee aldermen are questioning the worth of staying with the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.
Their argument, shared by some others in the Milwaukee-centric camp, is that the nearly 50-year-old organization doesn’t pay heed to the clout of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County in relation to the six other counties it serves.
Not just cutting off the nose to spite the face: Without Milwaukee’s involvement, it would be like lopping the head off a body of knowledge for the region.
Milwaukee is clearly the center of the region and gets due attention. However, it can’t thrive without counties like Waukesha, where many of its workers and financial backers live.
Although there are definite differences between the counties - Highway 83 in the town of Genesee would never be mistaken for National Avenue in Milwaukee - there is a vested interest to explore every avenue of benefit.
A prime resource is found in SEWRPC (the location of which in City of Pewaukee is purely arbitrary).
County supervisors here debated the worth of staying with the planners last year, though took no action. And we have wondered what level of attention Waukesha County gets in relation to its down payment that ranks second only to Milwaukee County.
But ultimately the planning organization gives the region resources, options and a historical perspective that might otherwise come at a premium.
A few positive recent examples are its two-year water study in relation to accessing Great Lakes water, research into a rural and metropolitan Wi-Fi system and assistance to Pewaukee and City of Pewaukee during its oft-reviewed merger discussions.
Others - notably, the push for an expensive light-rail system that might alleviate nothing but taxpayers of some more money - are not viable for the county. Though its ranks do make a case for that option sometime in the future, playing particularly in Milwaukee’s favor.
At least the planning group offers informed, documented choices. It’s something Milwaukee leaders should aim for instead of relying on fast talk and advisory measures that would cut ties and cut down SEWRPC.
Riverwest Network News has a nicely coordinated and linked-filled summary of multiple newspaper and blog postings about the ongoing controversy regarding SEWRPC, here.
The Waukesha Environmental Action League celebrates 30 years of land preservation and resource conservation Saturday.
WEAL deserves congratulations for hard environmental work in a sometimes-hard environment.
The party is in Muskego, with details here.
I especially like State Sen. John Lehman's (D-Racine) focus on 1st and 2nd offenses. Wisconsin's law is especially weak there.
And its work in regional cooperation will be a focus of a timely, public conference at Marquette University Wednesday, June 25th.
Don't head for Door County to go cherry picking this year. Weather woes knocked out most of the crop.
Dave Dempsey reminds us that water bottlers will be able to divert Great Lakes water to faraway users while pipelines are much more restricted.
This hypocrisy undermines the Compact and Great Lakes sustainability, and is a loophole that, to date, none of the Great Lakes states care to close.
An effort to keep cigarette butts off the Lake Michigan beaches in Chicago allows the Chicago Tribune to look at the stinky, toxic mess worldwide.
Another reason to ban smoking, period.
Yesterday's Freeman carried a news story defending SEWRPC and quoting various folks predicting doom and gloom for Waukesha County should Milwaukee County or City leave the seven-county planning agency.
(When I posted this, I did not have the URL or full text, but the Freeman has kindly supplied the text and I have copied it in full, at the bottom.)
It's fascinating to me that there is concern about the damage some say would occur if Milwaukee County used its $800,000+ annual property tax donation to SEWRPC to fund a more urban-friendly planning agency.
What Milwaukee would gain, and what is absent from the Waukesha/SEWRPC perspective, is valuable control over transit planning and other related items that take a back seat now to SEWRPC's suburban and exurban structure and priorities.
As I have said repeatedly, why does the discussion of regionalism have to take place within the framework and language and repeated outcomes that we have now - - the status quo - - and not use any new language or consider new or different formats that could achieve the same ends, but that change the rules and players of the game.
How about Milwaukee as a genuine partner in planning, not as a checking account?
You can contort yourself into knots and turn blue in the face defending SEWRPC, but you cannot get past these facts which grate on city dwellers in Milwaukee:
With a population of 600,000, and more residents than any of the non-Milwaukee County counties in SEWRPC - - all of which have three SEWRPC board seats, the City of Milwaukee has no seat at the table.
Despite having the largest share of minority residents in the region, SEWRPC has no minority core staff members, and has not had minority core staff for years.
There isn't even a core staff member with a City of Milwaukee address.
And minorities are excluded from SEWRPC's powerful advisory committees. There are zero African-Americans, and only one City representative, on the 32-member water supply advisory committee.
This is 2008. The US Civil Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to end this sort of institutional discrimination more than 40 years ago.
How is that SEWRPC is immune, tone-deaf, care-free and thoughtless when it comes to basic operations like hiring?
Yet the City of Milwaukee, where more than half the population is now minority, is responsible for sending SEWRPC about $400,000 annually in recent years as its portion of Milwaukee County's contribution to SEWRPC's operating budget.
I don't think SEWRPC practices affirmative action. This is beyond benign neglect. There's no action, there. There's nothing affirmative.
Milwaukee gets taxation without representation, spending without accountability, planning without participation.
It's long past due that Milwaukee get itself out of SEWRPC.
Big money is being taken annually by commissioners and spent by managers from Milwaukee who cast a blind eye towards Milwaukee's housing, employment and transportation needs.
Enough is enough.
Final thought:
I'll bet there is more than a handful of Waukesha County residents who look at the $600,000+ annually that they ship off to SEWRPC, then look at their own city and county staffs, and wonder just what the heck they are getting for all the overlap.
Freeman text:
Without Milwaukee, SEWRPC in doubt
Waukesha leaders unhappy with metro push to leave
By JOE PETRIE Freeman Staff
WAUKESHA With several Milwaukee aldermen beginning a push for the city to leave the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, the future of the commission and regional initiatives could be left in doubt.
Because the commission is set up to meet the needs of the metro Milwaukee area, the absence of Milwaukee County would cause problems with obtaining federal money and serving the needs of the entire region, SEWRPC andWaukesha leaders said Wednesday.
And though the resolution by the Milwaukee aldermen is advisory, leaders in the planning group and from Waukesha are taking it very seriously.
"We're very concerned because the community is very important to us," said Phil Evenson, executive director of SEWRPC. "If they left, it would have the potential to destroy the commission."
Milwaukee Aldermen Bob Bauman, Jim Bohl and Nik Kovac introduced theresolution after former Milwaukee mayoral aide Jim Rowen publicly questioned the commission's need to exist in Milwaukee. In the resolution, the aldermen raise numerous grievances such as an underrepresentation on the SEWRPCboard, favoritism by the commission for suburban communities and the fact that the commission offices are in Pewaukee.
In the resolution, they describe it as "a classic example of taxation without representation."
Last year, several Waukesha County supervisors complained about SEWRPC and made threats to leave the commission as well, but no further action was ever taken.
SEWRPC provides long-term community water, transit and land use plans for municipalities in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, Kenosha, Washington, Ozaukeeand Walworth counties. However, the majority of the $2.5 million in municipal funding to the organization comes from Milwaukee and Waukesha counties, at $845,525 and $657,675, respectively.
Evenson said he would not speculate if Waukesha's share would change if Milwaukee were to leave the commission. But without that Milwaukee money, Evenson said it would make SEWRPC's job much more difficult.
For example, he said planning for regional transit has decrees from the Federal Transit Commission where his group must include the metro Milwaukee area and Milwaukee County.
Waukesha County Board Chairman Jim Dwyer, who serves on the SEWRPC board, said he doesn't believe the grievances raised by Milwaukee are completely accurate.
If Milwaukee left the commission, the ramifications would be felt in Waukesha County because the state's largest city is important in planning and politics for Waukesha. "There would be problems anytime a key member left an organization, Dwyersaid. "Hopefully it can be resolved soon."
Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas agreed that it wouldn't be beneficial to either county if Milwaukee chose to leave the commission and hopes that leaders there realize that while SEWRPC may not be perfect, it's veryimportant.
While Vrakas and other leaders in the area have been working on regionalization efforts for transit and water, he said the resolution could also have the potential to erect barriers leaders have just worked to teardown.
"The city isn't a region onto itself," Vrakas said. "But some people still feel that way and it's just not productive."
(Joe Petrie can be reached at jpetrie@conleynet.com)
Defenders of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission are fond of repeating the agency's claim that it gives advice and doesn't veer into advocacy.
Patrick McIlheran of the Journal Sentinel trotted that out the other day, and I argued in response that an agency like SEWPRC moves beyond advice to advocacy everytime it chooses to study one issue over another, commits its resources, writes an agenda, selects a committee, hires staff, picks consultants and produces studies, plans and other documents.
And that helps explain why SEWRPC's work products have been pro-suburban and pro-highway expansion - - with housing, transit and other more urban priorities getting the short end of the stick out at SEWRPC's exurban Pewaukee offices.
So...in this context, let's consider this letter from SEWRPC chairman Thomas H. Buestrin to Gov. James Doyle, dated January 27, 2003.
You decide if his are the words of an advisor, or an advocate.
I'll set the scene: In January, 2003, SEWRPC's freeway expansion study was essentially finished, and would be formally wrapped up at the commission in a few months. Public comments had run against the study's proposed new 127 miles of traffic lanes, with commenters often suggesting transit additions instead of bigger highways.
To counteract those comments, SEWRPC commissioned a public opinion survey with questions designed to elicit pro-freeway responses.
The freeway project's first phase, rebuilding and expanding the Marquette Interchange, would begin in 2004, with the City of Milwaukee trying to convince the state to reduce the scale and cost of the project.
Buestrin is a long-serving SEWRPC commissioner from Ozaukee County, according to the SEWRPC website.
(SEWRPC does not offer comprehensive biographical information about its commissioners on the agency website. It notes that Buestrin has served for nearly 30 years, in two lengthy stints, dating to 1970. Googling Buestrin, I read that he is on the board of Bank Mutual Corporation, Brown Deer, which operates banks in Wisconsin. The Bank Mutual Corporation 2008 proxy statement has this description of director Buestrin:
"President of Buestrin, Allen & Associates Ltd., real estate investment, management and development."
Wrote Buestrin to Doyle:
"I am writing to express the Commission's support for the reconstruction of the Marquette Interchange as proposed by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT). The Department's proposal fulfills the promise of ensuring a truly modern, efficient interchange that will be required to serve the greater Milwaukee area and, indeed, the entire State for the next 50 years. Other proposals recently advanced fall short of fulfilling that promise.
"The Commission has worked closely with the WisDOT for many years, providing the vital transportation systems planning that precedes detailed engineering work by the Department. Our work has consistently found a compelling need to accomplish design improvements as our freeways are rebuilt over the next 25 to 30 years, including the elimination of left-hand turning movements at freeway-to-freeway interchanges, the minimization of lane drops at such interchanges, and the reduction of sharp curves on freeway interchange ramps that impede traffic flow and contribute to traffic accidents. The WisDOT design recommendations for the Marquette Interchange would achieve all of these objectives. The Marquette Interchange proposal has been recommended by the Commission's Freeway Study Advisory Committee which consists of a broad mix of public and private sector leaders from throughout southeastern Wisconsin. Moreover, our public opinion surveys indicate strong support for "doing it right" as we make critical freeway rebuild decisions in the coming years.
"We understand that the present financial situation is a very difficult one. As we begin to rebuild the southeastern Wisconsin freeway system, however, we need to be forward looking and ensure that the investments made over the next few years serve the Region and the State well for many years to come.
"Thank you for your consideration in this manner.
"Very truly yours,
"Thomas H. Buestrin
"Chairman"
Advice, or advocacy?
Oddly, says McIlheran, in yet another furious bit of keyboarding aimed at me on his blog, it's both.
The tirade tracks poorly. He alleges some people want to make some planning outcomes illegal.
And McIlheran only gives his readers a portion of the large second paragraph in Buestrin's letter, and none of graphs one, three, and the forth, which is only a single line in closing.
I reprinted Buestrin's entire text, so nothing is taken out of context.
McIlheran stooped to spin wrapped around some selective quotes.
I'd expected better
But back to Buestrin's letter.
Let's put it this way: if the Chairman of SEWRPC ever wrote a letter to the Governor about why the state should spend $6.3 billion modernizing and expanding transit in this region - - in a plan that didn't set money aside for highway upgrades or new lanes - - you could honestly say: "Wow: SEWRPC is run by a real transit advocate!"
The Madison area is moving towards commuter rail.
It would not surprise me if trains start rolling there before they do in the Milwaukee area.
If you think of used cars as a form of recycling, turning a Hummer Dealership into a used car sales operation is something of a Win-Win-Win.
It's hard to make sense of this McIlheran screed.
It's got more spin in it than a carton of hula-hoops and more mischaracterizations than what Fox network cable news serves up in a 24-hour cycle.
I started to answer it point-by-point, but I read it again, and I decided against it because it's barely coherent.
You can do better than that, Patrick.
As the state is preparing to begin a $1.9 billion reconstruction and widening of I-94 south from Milwaukee to the Illinois state line, without a parallel commuter train component or other scheduled and budgeted transit innovations, keep this in mind if you wonder why:
When the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) finished writing the $6.3 billion regional freeway reconstruction and expansion plan in 2002 that it forwarded for implementation to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation - - the plan that includes the upcoming, record-setting highway expenditure - - SEWRPC could have written a more comprehensive and balanced transportation plan for the region instead.
It chose not to write such a plan, according to documents contained...in SEWRPC's own records.
Bear with me here: I'll point you to several letters and documents in a lengthy but accessible SEWRPC pdf that is well worth the downloads.
SEWRPC rolled out its freeway plan in 2002, after a long, million-dollar study paid for by WisDOT, that called for 127 miles of new lanes across its seven-county region.
It then took comments and held a series of public hearings, where testimony ran against a regional transportation plan costing so much money, and taking so much land, over so many years without being balanced with better transit and other so-called "freeway-related" improvements.
SEWRPC compiled the hearing record, and on its website, http://www.sewrpc.org/, has archived every written comment it received.
Give the agency for being thorough.
I'm going to reference several comments and documents in the archive because they offer deep insight and hard evidence into how and why we have ended up with a multi-billion-dollar-freeway-only plan now unfolding just as spiking gas prices are both tamping down driving and raising the demand for transit.
The written comments are archived as Appendix C.
Sometimes the file takes a while to load, as it is lengthy, and watch the pagination.
On p. 121 of the comment archive, a May 20, 2002 letter from Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist to SEWRPC Executive Director Philip Evenson is posted.
Norquist says he has read, (and submits with his letter), a WisDOT document dated September 8, 1998, that is entitled "Proposal to foster a public dialogue leading to a regional consensus on implementable freeway-related improvements in Southeastern Wisconsin."
(I am struck in that title by the words "dialogue...consensus..freeway-related improvements." For a WisDOT document title and orientation, WOW!)
Norquist goes on to note that the six-page WisDOT document says, among other things, that planning for transportation in the region and achieving a consensus on that plan will "require addressing freeway-related items such as multimodal transportation, ITS (intelligent transportation systems), land use controls, demand management, as well as freeway capacity, design, and operation."
"Multimodal" is jargon for rail, bike paths, even sidewalks, along with roads and highways. We have a new multimodal station downtown, where buses and Amtrak converge, for example.
"Demand management" is more jargon for pricing tools that can influence driving decisions, such as tolls, parking fees, discounted bus passes, or ride coupons handed out by employers, to encourage transit use, and so forth.
Both multimodal investments and demand management tools can reduce the need for more freeways.
In other words, the document was pointing to integrated transportation options, with freeways and other non-freeway items, planned for and scheduled comprehensively together, to spark a dialogue and win a consensus from disparate interests.
This came on the heels of an earlier WisDOT initiative to blend freeway expansion and light rail that was vetoed by then Waukesha County Executive Daniel Finley, leading to the current bi-county transportation stalemate and the evaporation of many millions of dollars in regional transit funding.
Anyway...Norquist goes on in his letter to ask Evenson why those many alternatives have been omitted in favor of freeway construction and expansion only.
Norquist notes that elsewhere in the WisDOT document the extensive list of the "elements" of "a surface transportation system:"
"...freeways, principle arterial streets and highways, minor arterial streets and highways, collectors, and access roads; and the public transit system such as inter-city buses, commuter buses, express buses and local buses, Amtrak, commuter rail, light rail, and street cars," according to the WisDOT document."
The WisDOT document then appears in full in the archive, as Norquist submitted it for the record.
Evenson's May 23, 2002 letter in response follows Norquist's letter and document.
The SEWRPC Executive Director respectfully tells Norquist that SEWRPC disagrees with the Mayor's interpretation of what the WisDOT document says.
And then we get to the heart of the problem when it comes to the one-dimensional highway-heavy transportation planning and implementation we have in this region:
Evenson tells Norquist that what SEWRPC has acknowledged in its study, as Evenson says SEWRPC does routinely, is that all the transportation elements are put on the table, and in regional transportation system plans - - but in the case at hand, SEWRPC, with WisDOT as its client, is focusing on "a subelement of the broad multi-modal transportation system," while recognizing the "anticipated contributions of the other elements..."
"Issues related to freeway reconstruction, including multi-modal transportation, land use controls, and demand management were to be addressed in the study, but were to remain in the "background" relative to the primary focus of the study, which was to be freeway design and capacity (see page 1 of the WisDOT document)," Evenson writes.
Then at p. 127 in the same archive, another amazing document appears.
It's a letter submitted by Michael Maierle, the City of Milwaukee's Long Range Planning Manager in the Department of City Development.
(Full disclosure: I also submitted a formal comment to the SEWRPC hearing process that appears on pps. 126-7, as a June 7th, 2002 letter. As a former Norquist staffer, I knew Michael Maierle, too. But for a couple of years prior to the SEWRPC hearing I had been working on the 2000 census for Norquist in the city's Department of Administration as Deputy Director, and hadn't seen these documents until yesterday. In fact, I had forgotten that I had even submitted a comment.)
Anyway, in his letter, Maierle brings up and submits the same WisDOT document - - and here is the stunner:
Maierle says when he worked some years earlier for WisDOT he was the transportation planning document's author!
"It is disturbing," writes Maierle to SEWRPC, "that the Commission chose to ignore this proposal for a balanced approach to regional transportation, and, instead, focused all their energy and public resources on a plan that is limited to freeway expansion."
I do not see in the archive a response to Maierle's letter.
Mark Belling says that people who ride the bus are "one of the fringe."
And that transit is "a cult;" building more is "moronic."
Let's see - - those cultish, moronic fringe folks would be people under 16, school children, people who don't own cars or who choose not to operate them, along with many senior citizens, and so forth.
In a city like Milwaukee, that's a large percentage of the population.
I guess Mark doesn't stand up for them.
Well said, and gutsy, Andy Guy.
Check out his GreatLakesGuy blog, too.
Ah, Dallas - - where former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist used to joke there were more right-wing radio talk show hosts than our fair city - - Dallas, like so many other US cities large and small, is expanding its city rail system.
Ever what it is about Milwaukee and our 'region' that is so hostile to trolleys and light rail?
More bloggers, weighing in, on the SEWRPC discussion.
Many thanks, Metro Milwaukee Today, and blogger Greg Kowalski.
The more, the better, because raising awareness of what SEWRPC is, where they are, what they do and why is long overdue in these parts.
And the issued raised in MMT about the Chicago area's newly-reconstituted planning commission is right on the money.
In March, I posted a comparison of the Chicago effort, and its website, to SEWRPC.
That group puts SEWRPC to shame.
In-house Journal Sentinel conservative columnist Patrick McIlheran comes to the defense of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, but flunks Politics 101.
He opines that SEWRPC is merely advisory, but SEWRPC does more than offer advice.
It goes a long way towards setting the development direction and agendas in a seven-county region. In politics, whomever sets the agenda holds sway over the process and the outcome.
SEWRPC appoints its working committees, hires and directs consultants, establishes the ground rules and parameters for discussion and analysis and selects lists of alternatives from which the preferred option is selected.
All of which again and again helps create outcomes that play out across the region.
That's how power is created and exercised. It's a heckuva lot more than offering advice.
SEWRPC also enjoys a key federal designation that gives it added power when it comes to major highway construction, thus freeway expansion in the region could not proceeg without SEWRPC's stamp of approval.
That's more than offering mere advice to the state because SEWRPC's freeway expansion and reconstruction study will result in 120 miles of new highway lanes, along with development that reinforce suburban sprawl, speeds farmland conversion and starves transit of transportation department funding.
And SEWRPC exercises power, and has impact, when it chooses not to put an item on its agendas and calendars, like housing in the region.
No study since 1975.
McIlheran says people like me want a planning body that is a governmental boss.
Say what?
What I argued for was equity in SEWRPC's governance for, as he labels us, "urbanists," for taxation with representation.
Leaving the City of Milwaukee off the SEWRPC board is a genuine weakness, though that was done by state statute. Maybe that can be changed with an amendment.
A better idea is a new commission with Milwaukee city or county at its core.
After 48 years of taxation without representation for urbanists, I'd say it's high time.
Failing to hire minority staff - - in fact, any seniot staff from Milwaukee - - or to orient planning agendas or attention towards Milwaukee and its minority population are self-inflicted wounds by SEWRPC's managers.
And continuing to spend urbanists' money without their input is a rip-off.
Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner took a hard line when it came to some Katrina aid after the hurricane and devastating levee breaks in New Orleans, as Xoff had nicely summarized it.
I wonder if similar devastation - - but mercifully far, far fewer deaths - - in communities right in his Congressional district will soften his heart?
The Small Business Times has the story.
Later update: new Ald. Nik Kovac becomes the third co-sponsor.
Gettin' interesting.
Another sad ending to a fatal OWI episode, the driver's 5th.
In alcohol-enabling Wisconsin, the 4th OWI conviction is still a misdemeanor.
Tougher earlier sentencing and other state interventions could have made this tragedy less likely.
While people continue to suffer, legislators are out fiddling on the campaign trail.
Milwaukee Magazine's editor Bruce Murphy has posted an item about governance and policy controversies surrounding the seven-county regional planning commission, SEWRPC.
It's a welcome item.
We're all finally getting to the bottom of what SEWRPC does, what it doesn't do, and most importantly, why it is what it is.
Murphy offers an interesting new line of analysis - - that there's a better chance of change eventually sweeping SEWRPC when Waukesha County residents get tired of subsidizing the smaller SEWRPC counties (right now, Milwaukee County pays the largest share of the SEWRPC operating budget, Waukesha County the second) that pay chickenfeed to the agency, but get the same three seats on the commission board.
And get access to SEWRPC data and activities essentially at a discount, with the freight being paid by the more populous counties - - Milwaukee and Waukesha.
The truth is that every SEWRPC function could be jobbed out to an existing municipal agency in the seven-county region: In Dane County, the regional planning commission gets its transportation planning from the City of Madison, so there are administrative savings and less duplication of effort.
If SEWRPC were genuinely independent, you could argue that there were reasons for maintaining an uberagency to take charge of dicey issues and offer solutions that were both fair and challenging.
But as Murphy points out, SEWRPC was laid out to represent land, not populations, and that has led to action on its plans for highway expansion, not urban transit, or housing or initiatives that have the City of Milwaukee as the highest priority.
Bill Christofferson brings us up to date on Iraq war Moratorium events this coming Friday, along with links to further information and donation opportunities.
Here are the details:
Friday, June 20, is Iraq Moratorium #10, a day to do something, alone or with others, to show that you want the war and occupation of Iraq to end.
Two events are planned in Milwaukee this week, 17 in Wisconsin, more than 100 across the country.
In Milwaukee, national peace and impeachment activist David Swanson speaks at 7 pm Thursday in Room 001, Cudahy Hall, 1313 W. Wisconsin Ave., on the Marquette campus. It's free. Parking in Wells Street ramp. Details and more about David Swanson here: http://iraqmoratorium.org/events/listings/1/1027.html
Friday is the usual Milwaukee vigil from 5 to 6 pm in the heart of downtown, Water and Wisconsin, with signs, flags, banners, theater, music and whatever else you choose to bring. Join us if you can. It will boost your spirits.
You'll find a complete list of Wisconsin events here: http://www.wnpj.org/
And here's the national list: http://iraqmoratorium.org/events/10.html
If you can't do anything else, please consider giving a buck or two or more to keep the Moratorium growing. It's a shoestring operation that puts every dollar to immediate and effective use. Please be as generous as you can. Click here to donate: http://iraqmoratorium.org/donate.html
Thanks for all you do in the cause of peace.
Dealing with the transportation crisis on flooded I-94 lanes between Milwaukee and Madison to allow traffic again to pass through that critical area is exactly what transportation dollars and skills are for.
WisDOT Secretary Frank Busalacchi ordered the emergency fix.
Fixing and maintaining the massive road system we already have should be the department's highest priority - - not adding new lanes at skyrocketing prices to relieve phantom congestion between south Milwaukee and the Illinois line.
Instead of Build It Now, the WisDOT practice and taxpayer demand should be Fix It First, as 1000 Friends of Wisconsin and others have long argued.
In an op-ed published June 8th in the Journal Sentinel's Crossroads section, I proposed that Milwaukee, either city or county, or both, use procedures in state law to pull out of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission and to establish a separate commission patterned the regional planning structure for Madison and Dane County.
And I argued that kind of new arrangement would enhance regional cooperation around here by putting Milwaukee on a par with the other counties' populations.
Right now, the City of Milwaukee has no seats on the SEWRPC 21-member commission even though its 600,000+ residents exceed the total population combined in four of the seven SEWRPC counties.
A new commission could be a more equal partner in regional discussion and action, and address several levels of discrimination at SEWRPC.
I thought it was a good idea.
Others said it would cause the sky to fall.
Some defenders of the status quo, less disturbed by a commission where the city has no vote, are also having their way with the regional cooperation language, too.
They suggest that any change in how regionalism is defined, and implemented, are negatives.
A letter to the editor in today's Journal Sentinel from Julia Taylor, the executive director of the Great Milwaukee Committee, accuses me of undermining regional cooperation.
Said Taylor:
"However, the tired "city vs. suburbs" argument helps no one. Detraction that discourages regional growth, a larger view and collaboration is a backward step. We all must work together for Milwaukee and the region to grow and prosper."
So a new format for regionalism or a template for regional discussion is backward?
And a new commission comprised of one county and/or one large city working with a SEWRPC that is minus one county and city couldn't be collaborative?
Why not?
An editorial in yesterday's Journal Sentinel calls Milwaukee's "succession" from SEWRPC a "nuclear option."
That's overstating what I said, and what would occur, if a second planning body were created in this region.
The inclusion of seven counties in SEWRPC when it was created in 1960 was arbitrary.
There could have been any number of these counties roped into a planning commission: seven was no more a magic number than three or five or eight.
I'd argue that placing Walworth and some of the other heavily-rural counties in SEWRPC are only there so they can access regional services made more affordable by Milwaukee County's big annual property tax transfer.
Every year, Milwaukee County pays the largest share of SEWRPC's counties'-supported operating budget.
A new regional planning commission arrangement along the lines I suggested would put Milwaukee County and City on a more equal plane with the other counties in the SEWRPC region.
It would also allow this most-urban county in the region to focus on transportation and other relationships in northern Illinois and Chicago, rather than having its planning funds plan interstate highway ramps to the shopping mall at Pabst Farms, or 120 new freeway lanes throughout the region as currently defined.
I'd argue that genuine regional planning would constantly include studying and embracing changes in the very definition of "region," and "regionalism" and "regional planning" by the regional planners and their existing agency themselves.
The SEWRPC model does not work well in an artificially-designated region where the largest city, with the largest number of low-income residents, doesn't have a seat at a table managed by representatives of the more upper-income suburban and exurban counties.
A new structure - - with two parallel commissions and no net increase in spending - - could make Milwaukee a true regional partner, and as I argued in my op-ed, make the city, the county and the region(s) stronger.
Its plan to expand I-94 can't be justified - - that's WisDOT politics as usual.
But dissing a Governor's Task Force, exposed by Gretchen Schuldt - - that's taking WisDOT 'autonomy' to an entire new level.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Larry Sandler brought readers something of a scoop Monday morning:
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce has hired a known anti-rail California consultant, Thomas Rubin, to advise local officials and the private sector on regional transit problems and solutions.
Rubin likes to call light rail's benefits "myths."
As Sandler points out, the MMAC supports the proposed, and stalled commuter rail line known as the K-R-M that could serve Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee.
That's not a big contradiction, since commuter rail serves a different rider than light rail, which Rubin opposes.
Scoop update: Sandler reported later Monday that Rubin is suggesting expanded bus service, but with lower fares, something that County Executive Scott Walker opposes. The key graphs about this twist, are below:
"MONDAY, June 16, 2008, 12:15 p.m.By Larry Sandler
Cut fares, boost service, consultant says
"Town of Yorkville - Cutting fares and restoring slashed service could be key strategies for rescuing the financially troubled Milwaukee County Transit System, a nationally known transit consultant told the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority today.
"And in a turnabout from his usual positions, California-based consultant Thomas Rubin recommended serious study of a transit sales tax and of a Milwaukee-to-Kenosha commuter rail line, although he stopped short of endorsing either option.
Rubin is an unlikely figure in the regional transit debate - a prominent rail transit critic backed by two conservative think tanks, hired by pro-transit business leaders to help break a longstanding stalemate on transit funding."
Commuter rail serves suburban communities, while light rail or trolleys serve cities - - Denver, Houston, Dallas, Baltimore, Portland, Memphis, Kenosha - - and soon, Kansas City.
Just not Milwaukee.
The MMAC is trying to help save Milwaukee County's ailing bus system with a local sales tax.
Bringing in a Thomas Rubin-type of pro-bus, anti-light rail advocate might help craft a bus system stabilizing plan, but could lead to fresh obstacles for downtown trolleys or light rail - - and forfeit development, tax-base and jobs along the routes and at stations.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett supports new rapid bus lines and a downtown rail system.
Walker has blocked the rail component, any local rail variation, preferring love from talk radio that an actual transit solution.
His latest scamarama: leasing the airport and turning lease payments into transit aid.
Might take five years to finish studying and maybe getting all the approvals, and producing higher airline fares, airport vendor rentals and costs for consumers, to boot.
Some solution.
It would be a loss for the city if Rubin's insertion into the discussion helps to keep Milwaukee the only big city in a local rail-free zone in America - - with one-dimensional, bus-only transit.
Milwaukee County taxpayers and bus riders need a real transit system financial plan and they are being offered parlor games and street-corner Three Card Monty.
Shell games are between-inning fun on Miller Park's centerfield big screen TV. Let's not elevate them to County political solutions.
Milwaukee County's bus system is facing multiple hurdles: plummeting ridership as transit use soars nationally, rising fares, no rail component, and County Executive Scott Walker's pledge to veto the latest sales tax rescue plan that is strongly backed by the business community.
Nimble politician that he is, Walker has throw out a huge diversionary idea to make it appear as if he is doing something to resolve the crisis:
Lease the county-owned Mitchell International Airport, then direct lease payments to the transit system.
The only problem is that such a scheme would take five years to implement, and the airlines that use the airport would have to OK the deal knowing their fees would rise to make the airport a profit-making business.
Increases that would be passed on to passengers, as would predictable increases in lease payments charged to the restaurants and shops that have stores in the concourses.
Some of that stuff is pretty expensive already, as are airline tickets. Want to pay more?
Walker will be long-gone from Milwaukee politics in five years, so he's avoiding a material problem that has festered since he took over the County Executive's office in 2002 by diverting us with an idea that could cause as many problems as it purportedly solves.
It's a little like trying to avoid foreclosure on your house by telling the bank that you could raise the money you owe by selling something else, like a condo - - except that the deal would take five years to complete and the other condo owners would have have to give their approval even though it would raise their association fees.
Vintage Walker: Just like his pension system 'reforms' that perpetuated bad old costly ways, and annual budgets that routinely papered over gaps with cotton-candy revenues.
Walker is the master of shell-game politics.
The county needs political leadership right now, not magic tricks.
As spiking oil prices makes city living more attractive, Milwaukee's Urban Ecology Center on the Milwaukee River is showing the documentary film "Escape From Suburbia" this Tuesday night.
Great timing.
The Urban Ecology Center is one of Milwaukee's genuine treasures.
Program details here.
Last Sunday, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sunday Crossroads section published an op-ed I wrote about the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC).
I argued that the agency was a bad deal for Milwaukee because, by law, its 21 commissioners represent seven Milwaukee-area county governments, but the City of Milwaukee, with more people than four of the seven SEWRPC counties combined) Kenosha, Walworth, Ozaukee and Washington), gets no commission seats, and thus no voice in the direction of the agency.
I called that taxation without representation, and it's a sad and true fact.
It's why SEWRPC has a suburban and exurban planning focus, and why it wrote for the state transportation department a $6.5 billion freeway rebuilding and expansion plan - - implemented in the Marquette Interchange since 2004, and scheduled soon to begin $1.9 billion in spending on I-94 south from Milwaukee to Illinois - - without dedicated dollars for new transit lines.
SEWRPC receives a big chunk of its operating budget every year from property tax payments transferred from the seven counties: Milwaukee city residents pay about half of Milwaukee County's annual tax transfer - - the largest of those paid annually by the seven counties - - yet the Pewaukee-based agency is physically and functionally isolated from the city of Milwaukee.
None of the SEWRPC senior staff have City of Milwaukee addresses or are minorities, according to agency records.
Milwaukee's urban needs and its low-income and minority residents just don't show up on SEWRPC's radar.
Another example:
In 2007, SEWRPC established an Environmental Justice Task Force to provide guidance to the agency on issues of importance to low-income and other inadequately-represented groups.
It set up the task force - - not a full-fledged SEWRPC committee - - after the agency was chastised at a 2004 federal highway hearing for ineffective outreach that excluded or discounted the participation by minority residents from regional planning.
So it took about three years, but SEWRPC finally set up something to facilitate the participation, albeit only wuth a task force, by excluded groups.
Will it be a real, functioning, partner with and inside SEWRPC, or is it more show than substance - - a sounding board, perhaps, but without actual power?
An early clue:
SEWRPC did not honor a task force request to allow it a meaningful voice in the agency's recently completed fast-tracked/no-search/no-public input hiring 'process' in which the agency named an insider as the next Executive Director.
The task force said, "hold on, slow down."
SEWRPC's executive committee - - a real committee made up of commissioners - - went ahead and made the hire.
Because that's the way SEWRPC has always hired the boss, the agency explained. It has had three executive directors since it was founded in 1960.
Bold and open are not the agency's style when it comes to leadership succession, or advice from the outside world, where citizen-taxpayers live and send in the budget.
So I argued that after being in business for 48 years, and having failed to write a housing plan for the region in 33 years (back when Gerald Ford was president) - - but recommending the construction of 120 miles of additional freeway lanes that will induce traffic, that will fuel sprawl and will be built- - it was time for Milwaukee, city or county, or both, to start fresh in the regional planning business.
That meant taking advantage of state law allowing a municipality to withdraw from an existing regional planning body and to petition the Gobernor to create a new one - - a Milwaukee-based and focused regional planning agency that redefines regionalism, and does not blow it up.
And that could put transportation, housing and other planning needs at the top of an agenda.
An urban agenda.
There are two pieces in response to my last Sunday's op-ed in the current Sunday, June 15th Crossroads.
An editorial acknowledges some of SEWRPC's short-comings, but suggests that Milwaukee removing itself from the agency would be a bad idea.
You can read the editorial here.
The paper also published a response to my op-ed signed by the seven county executives in the SEWRPC region.
Frankly, it struck me as wasteful of these elected officials' time and energy. though I agree with the headline, "Region must use planning to work for the benefit of all."
My point, exactly.
I had opined that a new planning commission focused on Milwaukee, city or county, could actually do that and strengthen regionalism, too.
I believed a new structure, patterned after what is in place in Dane County and Madison, would put Milwaukee on a par with the rest of the region.
That's because counties like Walworth, Washington, Ozaukee and much of Waukesha, Racine and Kenosha have more in common with each other - - rural land, working farms, smaller populations, relatively few minorities - - than they have with Milwaukee County and especially the City of Milwaukee and its 600,000+ residents.
The county executives, in their group op-ed, would have none of it.
Anyway: You can read what they signed, here.
Four final thoughts:
1. If there's a continuing conversation to be had on any of these issues, I'm in.
2. More people should join the discussion.
3. The seven county execs signing a joint op-ed supporting the status quo reinforces my belief that the counties support regional planning that keeps the City of Milwaukee in a secondary position, and holds back the region, too.
4. In state law, Milwaukee is referred to as a city of the first class.
At SEWRPC, Milwaukee is a second class citizen, and that's why its a bad deal for the city.
You can't build your way out of highway congestion by adding more lanes. All you get is induced traffic, and more motorists.
Similarly, you can't drill your way to more oil and expect the price to drop, as some hope will happen now that Saudi Arabia may increase oil production.
Psychologically, that may cause oil prices to dip - - temporarily. But adding supply will only stimulate more driving here, and certainly more buying for motorists being added by the thousands daily in China and India, to name but two expanding markets.
Throw in a falling dollar and speculation, and, well, forget it.
Alternative energy production, conservation, transit expansions - - these will reduce consumption, and air pollution, too.
Don't be fooled by the Saudi oil ploy, if it happens. The Saudi royal family will still scoop up more US consumer dollars, and in the end, gasoline prices will respond to the increased - - I'd argued induced demand - - and prices will soon be higher than they are now.
There will be more interest in transit, especially from people with long commutes from areas not served by decent transit as gas prices rise and motorists want alternatives denied them by one-dimensional planning.
Transit should be a bi-partisan, non-partisan issue, and as I have argued repeatedly, it's a great failing that the state and regional planning commission (SEWRPC) have given us a 25-year-highway expansion and rebuilding plan in the seven-county Milwaukee area that costs $6.5 billion, but is without new transit systems.
The Capital Times makes the same point.
The more support for transit as a needed public service - - commuter rail/light rail/buses - - the better the chance that transit improvements are possible.
Milwaukee and the area are ready for change, and the Multimodal station is in place.
Allies are always welcomed.
I had posted earlier about the continuing uproar at the Chuck E. Cheese on Bluemound Rd. in the Town of Brookfield, where out-of-control grownups were provoking police calls and raining on the kids' birthday parties.
Sanity prevails; the chain announced it was giving up its liquor license.
Score one for a safer and more friendly environment at the restaurant and on the area roads.
In the wake of the June floods, Clean Wisconsin has released a link to its 2007 Global Warming report.
Clean Wisconsin reiterates that predicted impacts of global warming are happening sooner than many had thought.
Other related materials are here, including my suggestion that when the emergencies are over there be a serious examination of land-use in southern Wisconsin - - wetlands and farm land losses, for example - - and the possible impact on uncontrollable stormwater runoff.
A referendum on financing Milwaukee County transit with a half-cent sales tax (and a companion deduction in transit-supporting property taxes) has the support of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
That's good.
And should the presidential election spur the big City of Milwaukee turnout that is probable, a referendum on a service vitally important to city residents should benefit from being on the November ballot.
That being said, referendum questions are more likely to win approval if there is an organized, coordinated, well-financed television-heavy campaign, so the work in getting a referendum question approved is no small feat.
Dave Dempsey has posted an explanation of the push in Michigan for a strong bill to implement the Great Lakes Compact with the Public Trust Doctrine as the guide.
That doctrine, dating back before statehood to the Northwest Ordinance, places an obligation on government to recognize water as a public resource protected in trust for the people.
Wisconsin's constitution incorporates the doctrine, and state law, including the recently-passed bill to implement the Compact here, does the same.
The issue, whether in Great Lakes diversion permissions or numerous other water questions in the state is, and will continue to be, just how vigorously the doctrine is enforced.
Sometimes the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources does a solid job with its enforcement role, and sometimes not.
Local governments have to be involved, too.
Allowing Summerfest to close access to Lake Michigan during festivals is an outrageous violation, though there is now circuitous access to the lake on sidewalks and paths provided by the new state park behind the festival grounds.
It was a creative, but expensive, solution.
The recent ban on fishing along a stretch of the Rock River in Fort Atkinson on a publicly-financed riverwalk weakens the doctrine.
And some communities in Waukesha County have limited access to lakes through parking restrictions, violating the doctrine's spirit.
It's refreshing to see former Michigan governors in both parties urging strong legislation to elevate the value of the Public Trust Doctrine.
This bi-partisan spirit was missing from portions of the Compact approval debate in both Ohio and Wisconsin, where false fears about property and water rights were used as obstacles to smooth legislative processes.
The objectors did not carry the day.
Last Sunday I wrote an op-ed in the Journal Sentinel Crossroads section explaining how Milwaukee's lack of representation on the regional planning commission's 21-member board has left Milwaukee and urban issues discounted.
It's a taxation-without-representation and discriminatory arrangement and Milwaukee should begin the legal processes to remove itself, or Milwaukee County, from the commission.
Now we learn that a separate state legislative study committee to be appointed to look at the issue of regional transportation authorities - - a possible breakthrough means of saving and expanding transit in Milwaukee - - also under-represents Milwaukee.
Same issue. Same problem. Different venue.
It's an unacceptable situation at the regional planning commission (SEWRPC), and it's wrong for the State Legislature and its study committee appointing process - - designed to produce legislation - - to follow a similar, discriminatory path.
Brookfield's Mayor is practicing an odd form of intergovernmental relations.
1. I didn't know such a thing a thing existed until...
2. I saw a college-age kid driving one down my UW-M neighborhood street, then turning onto a major boulevard, thus proving two things:
3. I don't get out enough, I guess, and...
4. Wisconsin's obsession with beer and driving knows no bounds.
Talk about a campaign stunt.
For Walker, it's all-campaign, all-the-time.
After the rains stop, and after the basements dry out, and when concern and assistance can turn to longer-range planning and action, communities west to east, and particularly in hard-hit southeastern Wisconsin, need to begin addressing a serious question:
Is there a relationship between the June flooding damage and the development that converted porous, rain-absorbing farmland and green space to impervious parking lots, streets, driveways and other materials that then pushed rain and surface water faster into storm drains, culverts, streams, rivers and lakes - - and then into homes and downtowns?
Given predictions in recent years of more routine heavy rain events in the upper Midwest in a warming climate environment, assessing the situation with land-use patterns as an overlay would make a lot of sense.
Much the way that land-use and development patterns have been studied in the wake of western and southern states' increasing problems with water shortages and forest fire damage.
The blog Wisconsin Truth Watch raised this matter several weeks ago in what is now a very prescient post.
Paul Soglin wondered about the land-use issue the other day as he drove back to Madison from Milwaukee and noted the high levels of water.
How much flooding is the result of heavy rain, and how much is related to the way the heavy rain runs off?
Good question.
And not surprising coming from a former long-term Mayor.
But are other officials making these connections, or raising the questions?
Local, state and federal officials are busy with the present emergency.
And that's exactly as it should be.
That's why I said at the beginning that when things calm down, let's make sure other questions get asked and answered.
I would propose an independent study - - and I would think that the UW-M WATER Institute, with its experts and data bases and unimpeachable credibility is in a perfect position to carry it out.
A Milwaukee County Board committee has endorsed an eventual referendum that, if approved by voters, would replace $65 million in property tax spending on the failing bus system with an identical sum of money raised by a half-cent sales tax.
It's a tax switch, not a new tax on top of an old one.
Positioning himself for a 2010 Republican Party candidacy for Governor,, and aligning himself with the anti-tax/anti-transit talk radio cabal, County Executive Scott Walker has promised to veto the plan and keep it off the ballot.
Walker's opposition is unconscionable, given the bus system's decline as a county asset on his now six-year watch, and its importance to hundreds of thousands of county residents.
The plan is a practical way to provide the bus system with a revenue stream for operations and equipment that does not burden property taxpayers.
Most cities already finance their transit systems without relying on the property tax - - a known regressive fiscal tool.
A sales tax also brings in revenue from visitors, and the amount is minimal: five cents on a $10 dollar purchase. Big deal.
Kudos to the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and the Greater Milwaukee Committee for aligning the business community behind the plan.
Walker could learn a few things about commonsense, financial planning and political leadership from those two organizations.
Clyde Winter, a blogger and columnist for the Ozaukee News-Graphic - - well, make that a former columnist - - has posted on his blog the column that was sent back by the paper along with his termination notice.
You can read the column on Winters' Hearts and Minds blog.
That leaves a real void in the paper's pages, that's for sure. The News-Graphic is part of Conley Publications, perhaps best known in the area as the publisher of The Freeman, Waukesha's local daily.
Winter is one of those people I only know through the Internet, and I am a fan of his blog. We need more of these authoritative and literate local voices.
His blog bio says he's a former military man who lives on the same farm his family founded in 1848.
After his column came back, Winter posted it with an addendum that he plans to run as an independent for the Senate seat held by Glenn Grothman.
Among them: Nestle, and that infamous Ice Mountain brand - - from a Michigan wetlands.
Advocates wanting a downtown location for UW-M's new engineering campus are strengthening their case with the issuance of a white paper.
Link and related information, here.
Once its Governor signs the bill, Ohio will become the sixth of the eight Great Lakes states to approve the Great Lakes Compact.
Still to approve and adopt the agreement: Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Then the agreement goes to the Congress for approval, a step that may run into opposition from arid states in the south and west.
It's not well-known that studies and plans for modern rail connections statewide are gathering dust on the shelves of government planners even as gasoline prices make better transit a matter of personal and social survival.
Here is a link to the details of existing high-speed rail plans for Wisconsin, and how that system could be joined to a Midwestern rail grid hubbed in Chicago with links to St. Louis, Detroit and other cities.
Wisconsin could have better rail connections statewide, but it chooses to commit $1.9 billion rebuilding and expanding I-94 from Milwaukee to Chicago - - gaining no significant improvement in commuting times for motorists - - and making no start on the commuter rail line proposed in the same corridor.
It isn't a lack of money that prevents Wisconsin from obtaining better rail services, whether in cities or connecting them.
That $1.9 billion I-94 no-rail highway project is part of a $6.5 billion regional plan that includes no transit, but 120 miles of new lanes across seven counties.
Rail is stymied in Wisconsin and our southeastern area by the lack of political will - - and this extends from state government to county courthouses: no one will lead because the highway lobby is too strong and the status quo, until recently, had allowed The SUV To Be King.
Along with Cheap Air Fares.
No more.
State government should operate major rail lines as it operates highways because transportation is a public service and responsibility.
A portion of the gasoline and other fuel taxes should be dedicated to transit, in part because transit spurs economic development along its routes, and surrounding stations, including housing and commercial growth.
And we have to have a reasonable conversation in this state about transportation and taxes.
If Denver can launch a growing state-of-the-art 122-mile light and commuter rail system with a financial package that includes an eight-county sales tax of 4 cents on a ten-dollar purchase, why can't we?
The Denver financing scheme also funds 18 miles of rapid bus lines and 21,000 new parking spaces. Something for everyone. It's a package, and it serves all the public, not just motorists.
Minneapolis figured this out. Charlotte and Portland and Baltimore, and on and on, so the states and federal government can do the same when it comes to connecting cities, too.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett likes Denver's rail initiative, but he can't get County Executive Scott Walker to split $91.5 million in available federal funds to get started on downtown trolleys and more extensive express buses.
Locked into the old paradigm and using the city as a political punching bag, Walker says "no" to the rail component.
Talk radio laps that up, at the public's expense, and Walker can put it in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign ads, but what about the rest of the community left with stalemate, dwindling bus service, rising fares - - the burdens of a dismissed citizenry.
There should be modern train service in Milwaukee. We have an InterModal station. Let's have it live up to its name and promise.
And there should be passenger rail through Milwaukee to Green Bay and Madison. There should be stops along the way, with local rail or modern buses moving to and from stations.
Getting from the planning for rail to construction and operations has never been a high enough priority locally and statewide, but should be now.
Cities and other communities that are connected and criss-crossed by modern transit will flourish in an era of rising gasoline costs.
Waiting until gas goes to $10-a-gallon to get started on 21-century transit, including rail, would further stress the economy, diminish our cities, and make a mockery of democracy
.
Good source for Minnesota news, once known as the Minnesota Monitor, is re-launched. Welcome back.
Noah Hall suggests in his blog posting that the Bush administration's EPA will allow transfers between bodies of water, without Clean Water Act permits, though pollutants could travel from a polluted water source to a cleaner one.
Dave Dempsey blogs about it, too.
If the EPA's position is not defeated in court, I could see this presenting water quality problems for some proposed Great Lakes diversions, or their return flow arrangements.
You wouldn't want a diversion or a return flow arrangement to bring pollution along with it, would you?
I'm sure we will hear more about this.
Why State Senators should stay away from computers and photocopy machines.
Summertime is book reading time.
So save these time and dates:
Authors/editors David Wagner and Paul Buhle will sign and discuss Howard Zinn's A People's History of American Empire, at Cafe Carpe in Fort Atkinson.
The Carpe, a Fort Atkinson landmark restaurant and music club, is at 18 S Water St W.
The event takes place Saturday, June 14th from 4:30 - - 7:30 p.m.
Long-time Wisconsin political activist Phil Ball is hosting.
Wagner was a reporter at the Madison Capital Times reporter and, later, an editor at The Freeman.
He and Buhle, a retired history teacher, have numerous books and publications to their credit.
The book, a re-issue of Zinn's seminal work in comic book form, is illustrated by renowned Madison cartoonist Mike Konopacki.
Contact http://www.cafecarpe.com/ for more info.
On Tuesday, June 17th, David Sirota - - writer, pundit and author of the new book The Uprising- - will speak and sign books at 7:00 P.M., at Schwartz Bookstore, 2559 N. Downer Ave., on Milwaukee's east side.
More information available at One Wisconsin Now.
Calling Dr. Freud...stat.
Doesn't McCain's wife own a Budweiser distributorship?
State Rep. Jon Richards, (D-Milwaukee), calls for investment in rail transit in and around Milwaukee.
He is right. And the argument has gained greater validity as gasoline breaks the $4-per-gallon barrier.
The continuing obstacle is Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, who does not believe in rail for the city, and who is willing use the riders of the county's deteriorating bus system as pawns in his struggle for transit spending control with Mayor Tom Barrett.
Walker wants to use all of a pot of federal funding to buy new buses; Barrett wants the money divided between new buses and a trolley system in the downtown.
The stalemate precedes Barrett's 2004 election.
The county's inability to provide reasonable transit and other important services recently led to the stunning public declaration by Sheldon Lubar, the well-known civil and business leader, that Milwaukee County government could be replaced with much-decentralized structure.
Lubar is also a Republican: disenchantment with Walker and county government is not necessarily partisan.
I have said in various forums that much of Milwaukee County's continuing fiscal problems began when former County Executive F. Thomas Ament and his allies on the county board of supervisors approved a series of greedy and ridiculously unsustainable pension obligations that continue to drain county coffers of millions of dollars annually.
Why I hold Walker responsible for the county's inertia ever since the pension fiasco was unearthed - - recall elections booted Ament and many supervisors, with Walker and other 'reformers winning election in 2002- - - is the way Walker relies on it as the political gift that keeps on giving.
Walker keeps on pleading poverty, and continues to cut services, including the transit system - - even though a large percentage of Milwaukee residents do not own cars, could less afford them now, and rely on buses that charge them among the highest fares in the country.
And Walker has not kept on top of pension problems that have mounted since 2002.
Walker will simply will not lead on fiscal policy. There's no innovation, no plan, no bold combination of tax shifts, let alone any increases, or revenue changes, with the state and city as partners, so that transit can be improved in the city and county.
He recently spelled out his pro-car, anti-rail belief system in an email to Charlie Sykes, posted here.
Opined Walker:
"The reality is that mass transit is for those who are transit dependent: people who need a ride because of income or health status. Its primary purpose is not to thrill people. Its primary purpose is to get people from one spot to another.
"Study after study shows that no matter how “exciting” rail is, the overwhelming majority of workers will stay in their vehicles and drive to work. So why spend millions and millions extra to move a percentage or two into mass transit?"
Maybe Walker doesn't know how many Milwaukee County residents have no access to automobiles, or what the impact of $4-gallon-gasoline has on a low-to-moderate income family?
UW-M researchers have noted that low-income families frequently lack access to an automobile, finding that 81% of people living below the poverty line in the Milwaukee-Ozaukee-Washington-Waukesha region live in the City of Milwaukee.
Walker thinks workers prefer to "stay in their vehicles and drive to work?"
What workers are these, and how in the real world do they get from Milwaukee to jobs in Pewaukee or West Bend or Cedarburg, for example?
Tacking to the right, and not to the center on this constellation of what should be seen as non-partisan matters has made Walker the darling of talk radio and the state GOP, but that leaves the public in the lurch.
Walker recently laid out his pro-car, anti-rail belief system in an email posted by AM-620 WTMJ talker Charlie Sykes.
Without creative solutions, without leadership from Walker - - and soon - - Milwaukee County will lose even more of its bus system.
The downtown trolleys could feed riders to the buses, and vice-versa, expand the new InterModal station downtown and coordinate with the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter line - - if that long-stalled initiative ever gets running.
Walker has managed to keep Milwaukee as just about the only rail-free big city in America. Soon it will be without a functional bus system, which is a county service.
Walker has to stop falling back on a bad hand he inherited in 2002.
He could start by calling Jon Richards.
Commissioners making up the 21-member The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWEPC) have four standing committees - - and one, the Intergovernmental and Public Relations Committee - - has not met since November 13, 2006, according to the Commission's website.
And because the committee has not met for more than 18 months, it has not even approved the minutes from its November, 2006 meeting, making the minutes posted on the website for that meeting considered not yet approved, the website says.
That's a long time for a committee to have not met and at least approve the minutes from its most-recent get-together.
Prior to November, 2006, the committee met in February, 2005.
It looks like the commission is saying that intergovernmental and public relations are not high priorities.
Is that a good message for SEWRPC?
The website says the committee is the agency's main vehicle for communications with the seven county boards in the SEWRPC region.
The county boards provide about one-third of the agency's operating budget: Milwaukee County, with the largest tax base in the region, sends SEWRPC the largest of the counties' annual appropriations, totalling more than $840,000 this year, SEWRPC records show.
SEWRPC could make more out of that committe if it used a bigger, broader definition of intergovernmental relations and public relations.
The committee has heavyweight, long-time members, including Commission chairman Thomas Buestrin, from Ozaukee County, and Commission treasurer William Drew, representing Milwaukee County.
Waukesha County Board chairman James Dwyer is also a member.
I'd call it a missed opportunity for SEWRPC to tell the public what it is, what it does, where and when it meets and how the public could get better involved in its work.
If it wanted.
I had mentioned in a posting Sunday a 2003 US Environmental Protection Agency power point presentation I'd seen in Chicago that urged local officials, in light of climate change models, to adjust their infrastructure and flood control plans to minimize the impact of heavier rain events.
I should also point out that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources had highlighted the same kind of analysis in a long, 2000 publication - - "Warming Trends " - - that is on its website, with additional links, here.
A key section on water includes this (emphasis added):
"Researchers speculate the upper Midwest would generally become warmer and wetter, with the average temperature increasing by about 4° F. The increase doesn’t mean we’d simply up the daily temperature by 4° ; a more likely scenario is that summer heat waves would be longer and hotter, and nighttime winter temperatures wouldn’t sink so low.
"Precipitation could increase by as much as 10% on average, but much of the increased precipitation could come in the form of intense storms, leading to local flooding and more runoff.
"Precipitation patterns could also change, with more rain coming in the winter and less in the summer. Less rain in the summer, paired with increased evaporation caused by warmer temperatures, could trigger severe summer droughts."
I'm posting this to quiet down the climate change deniers, but also to distribute good resources that have stood the test of time and are relevant year in, year out.
I'm not the only one who has raised the issue (here last year, for example) but let me again point out that heavy rains and widespread flooding in our area highlight a difficulty with water diversions and the Great Lakes Compact that hasn't gotten much ink:
In a word: Flooding.
How can communities like the City of Waukesha comply with the return flow requirements in the new Great Lakes Compact, and send millions of gallons of treated sewage back to Lake Michigan, without raising the levels of rivers that already flood in a heavy storm.
One return flow alternative being studied by the city and the Department of Natural Resources has Waukesha returning diverted water to Lake Michigan water using the Root River.
The Root River empties into Lake Michigan in Racine.
Waukesha now uses about nine million gallons of well water daily, and flushes it down the Fox River towards the Mississippi River - - which is out of the Great Lakes basin.
But sending treated water arising from a Great Lakes diversion to the Mississippi watershed does not meet the Compact's standard of returning diverted water to the Great Lakes basin, and, for good measure as close to the source as possible.
The City of Waukesha has said it will comply with the return flow requirements set forth in the Compact - - which is the right thing to say and do because return flow sustains Great Lakes' water levels and minimizes objections from other Great Lakes states which have to unanimously approve any out-of-basin diversion to a city like Waukesha.
Now note these two paragraphs from the Journal Sentinel's NewsWatch blog Monday morning:
"MONDAY, June 9, 2008, 11:15 a.m.By Annysa Johnson
Many Oak Creek roads still closed
"Flooding along the Root River in Oak Creek has left only two roads in and out of the city's south side accessible today: Interstate-94 and Chicago Road/state Highway 32, said Oak Creek officials, who expanded the number of roads that are now impassible.
"The officials said the flood damage estimate remains at $2 million, but reports of flooding in homes and businesses continue to pour in, Development Director Doug Seymour said."It's pretty extensive," he said."
And the Root River overflowed and flooded in Racine, too.
Here is a Channel 4 report.
So the political question becomes: do communities downstream from Waukesha have to brace themselves for bigger flows during rainstorms so that Waukesha can switch from well water to Lake Michigan water?
And Waukesha has said it wants to have permission to divert up to 24 million gallons daily, and other communities may either join that application or offer their own, and all will have to have return flow systems that comply with the Compact.
Are there technological fixes along the way, like overflow and detention ponds, or riverbank restorations, that could help the Root River, or the Menomonee River or other tributaries accept that much new water?
And if so, who would pay for that purchasing, construction, operation and maintenance?
Other return flow options could include the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage Commission accepting return flow from Waukesha through new pipes, or expanded connections with MMSD communities, but again, that will cost big money.
And MMSD already has capacity problems, too.
Many people - - particularly in the private sector and in some legislative offices - - have pushed hard in favor of diversions on the supply side of the issue: Can we get water, how much can we get, and when can we turn on the tap.
But the return flow and treatment costs on the back end of the process are big issues, too, and with the US EPA saying major rain events are becoming more frequent - - the big rain storms of 1988 were called 'once-in-500-year-storms,' yet have been exceeded in some area communities over this stormy weekend - - it's a good time to raise more awareness about the return flow and treatment issues right now.
State Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine) said not long ago that the Root River return flow option for Waukesha gave him pause.
"We're not Waukesha's toilet," he said.
This weekend underscores Mason's concerns.
Ed Garvey notes the continuing threat to the Great Lakes from arid western and southern states, regardless of the eight-state regional Compact just passed in Wisconsin to bar most diversions beyond the boundaries of the Great Lakes basin.
Ed is right: Congress could set the Compact aside, or legislation could be fashioned by drought-plagued, over-developed states to weaken or undo the Compact's diversion prohibitions.
What has to be monitored very carefully in Wisconsin and the other Great Lakes states, however, is the coming push for diversions that are allowable under the Compact to communities close enough the basin to qualify for consideration - - such as Waukesha - - and thanks to the GOP assembly caucus - - communities slipped into a new loophole in Wisconsin's Compact implementing law, like portions of Burlington or Mukwonago, that are in Walworth County, which does not straddle the Great Lakes basin.
That loophole created by the Wisconsin legislature could easily be duplicated in the other Great Lakes states, especially in Ohio, and lead to more water being diverted great distances than was intended when the Compact was drafted in 2005.
There are huge logistical and financial barriers to shipping Great Lakes water to Phoenix or Atlanta. Barriers, of course, can be resolved and overcome if the need is great and the costs are bearable.
Those barriers are far far less problematic in the Great Lakes states, where communities near the basin can argue forcefully that they should be allowed access to the water.
Waukesha's probable application for a diversion by the end of the year needs to be carefully scrutinized to make sure it meets the Compact's no-exception return-flow requirement and that does not provide the means to kick off a new round of suburban sprawl on open land that is needed for agricultural production, and that requires more highway spending to areas not served by transit.
Then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and I attended a conference in Chicago in 2003, hosted by Mayor Richard Daley, where officials from the EPA told Midwestern elected leaders that climate change models predicted heavier rain events.
The EPA officials were urging the Midwestern leaders to adapt their planning and spending to more aggressively confront storm water and related services because heavier, intense rains were going to be come more frequent.
Part of the message was: forget the notion of the "100-year-storm." They'll come more often than that in the Midwest as the atmosphere warms.
Again - - this wasn't advocacy science or partisan scare tactics.
This was basic municipal planning/dollars-and-sense advice from people in the George W. Bush administration to Midwestern mayors offered as an inter-governmental service because climate change was going to hit cities' budgets and constituents in difficult new ways.
The EPA officials had it all in a very power point format - - which I requested, and was assured was coming - - but it never did, and I left the Mayor's staff in January 2004 and didn't make a federal case out of not receiving it.
Now I wish I had.
Seems pretty relevant this weekend, no?
I make the case in Sunday's Journal Sentinel Crossroads section, here.
The Town of Brookfield says "no" to an Aldi supermarket. Might attract the wrong crowd to Bluemound Rd., whatever that means.
Yeah - - like those folks who duke it out at the Town of Brookfield Chuck E. Cheese, get kicked out, then need an Aldi's nearby so they can pick up groceries to finish dinner at home.
Oh, Town of Brookfield...your elitism is showing.
Hey, to the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce - - which is headquartered in Madison, by the way and far from our smoggier region here - - dirty air in southeastern Wisconsin should be tolerated.
If there is a reactionary position to be taken on a Wisconsin issue - - public health, road-building, clean air, tax equity - - you can count on the WMC to be right there.
Local historian John Gurda spoke truth to power in a recent Journal Sentinel op-ed on Milwaukee County's failing transit system, noting the lack of political will by both county board supervisors and executive Scott Walker to fully fund the system.
Politicians are unwilling to confront the system's needs with new taxes, so are throwing away a needed public resource made even more valued by $4-per-gallon gasoline.
A decade ago, the system was an award-winner. Now it has the sharpest drop in ridership nationally.
A disgrace.
Huffington Post is now directing its hundreds of thousands of readers daily to a green news and commentary link, here.
Plagued by drought and over-development - - and facing an influx of millions of new residents projected in the next decade - - the State of California has begun to use new legal authority to restrict or stall water-dependent development.
Too little water, too many annexations, too much unsustainable development: sound familiar, Waukesha County?
So say Waukesha County court officials.
My guess is that people will say: spend the money, as OWI with our current weak laws cost lives.
Welcome Milwaukee transit advocate Bill Sell to the blogosphere, with Bus Stop.
Given the state of the economy, and Milwaukee County's troubled bus system, Bill's timing is right on schedule.
The Shepherd-Express featured a piece in this current week's edition that pushed Great Lakes water conservation with a guide that readers could use to calculate their water usage.
A helpful way to bring an issue down to ground level.
Public money was provided to Fort Atkinson to help build a pleasant walkway along the Rock River - - I've been there and it's a real pretty spot right in the community's downtown - - but now the city council has told anglers they can't stand on about a quarter mile of the walkway to throw a hook into the water.
Reminds me of barriers to Lake Michigan that Summerfest enforces against anglers and walkers during the festival season, even though access to the public lakefront property behind the Summerfest grounds is guaranteed by the state constitution.
There is a protest planned on the riverwalk in Fort Atkinson Saturday, from 10 a.m. to-noon.
People not familiar with the layout of the riverwalk can easily find it behind the landmark Cafe Carpe.
Michael Horne is tracking I-94 details, deadlines and data at his blog.
Plenty of material there to archive.
I devoted my monthly slot at the Capital Times to Wisconsin's highway-building follies.
River preservationists and conservationists plan the best-named event of the year in Horicon on June 23rd.
Details from The Rock River Coalition here.
Spiking petroleum costs are running up the price of asphalt and vehicle fuels - - something I have written about earlier - - so there will be fewer patches and re-surfacings on roads this summer nationally, reports USA Today.
Yet our state transportation department is forging ahead with the addition of 70 miles of new I-94 lanes between Milwaukee and Illinois, part of an eight-year, $1.9 billion project.
That is part of a 25-year, $6.5 billion regional rebuilding that will add 120 miles of new lanes in seven counties.
When these plans were written, the projected price of gasoline for 2008 was $2.51 per gallon, with a 3% increase predicted annually.
Today the cost of diesel fuel to run all the trucks and machinery to deliver materials and construct, repair or 'improve' the pavement and right-of-way is about $4.25-a-gallon.
All this is another reason for the state to scrap the plan, repair the existing roadway and install commuter rail and other transit links so that motorists have a choice of transportation modes in southeastern Wisconsin.
You will recall that Charlie Sykes hauled out all the old chestnuts the other day when he attacked me for suggesting that light rail, killed by Tommy Thompson eleven years ago, could have offered motorists in the Milwaukee area today an appealing alternative to $4-per-gallon.
And an economic development tool, with stations and lines that attract residential and commercial investment.
That very scenario is unfolding in one city now constructing light rail - - Charlotte, North Carolina - - with a population of about 625,000 people.
Milwaukee's most recent population estimate is 602,000, or about 5% less than Charlotte's.
Here is the text of a recent story from Governing Magazine about what's happening in Charlotte - - and by contrast, what we are missing because of traditional risk-aversion and one-dimensional thinking and governing here.
TRANSPORTATION
More than Just a Train
June 2008 Governing Magazine
By ALEX MARSHALL
I’m starting to believe the hyperbole about the revolution being spawned by Charlotte’s new light-rail line.
Riding the spiffy silver and blue trains of Charlotte's new light-rail line, I watch through the train's windows how cranes and excavators push around dirt for new development projects.
Back when urban junkies — myself included — dreamed that cities could center around train lines, we railed at the formula-oriented developers who could crank out only cul-de-sacs and subdivisions near the newest highway off-ramp.
They ignored the possibility of putting apartment buildings and mixed-used projects beside a trolley line, even if a city could manage to get a rail line built.
No longer.
Now big international companies such as Cherokee Investment Partners, which is involved here in Charlotte, are poised — even eager — to swoop down, buy land and put up pedestrian-friendly businesses and homes around new transit stations.
And they're being joined by plenty of competitors.
This is not to suggest that progress in Charlotte has been easy. Arranging streets, parking, condominiums, shops, plazas and other components of development around transit here involves many choices.
Planners and developers still are struggling to balance the competing needs of parking and active street life in these new projects.
But in terms of a market and a vision, there is increasing clarity. Living near a transit stop has become part of a tried-and-true formula of downtown living.
Charlotte opened its $465 million, 15-stop, 10-mile "blue line" last November.
LYNX, as it is called, has about 13,000 riders daily, well ahead of the low-ball federal projections.
Now, the city and region are working on the many other ideas for lines and extensions.
A total of 7,000 new condominiums are planned along the line.Seeing how successful Charlotte's new line is, I start believing what I first dismissed as hyperbole — that it was revolutionary.
David King, who helped shepherd through assistance for LYNX from the state's transportation department when he was its deputy secretary, says, "Most people don't realize this is going to change the face and shape of Charlotte."
Last November, just weeks before LYNX opened, a grassroots referendum backed by angry anti-tax and anti-transit activists asked voters to repeal the half-cent sales tax for transit funding.
It failed by a two-to-one margin.
"The light-rail vote was a seminal moment," says Mark Peres, the president and editor of Charlotte Viewpoint, a magazine about culture and civic life.
"We were being held hostage by a minority viewpoint. Those people just sort of went away. It's just seismic in its impact."
The original plan for financing the system, however, builds in some difficulties for the future.
Back in the late 1990s, Mecklenburg County and the city of Charlotte banded together with Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro and other cities to push a bill through the legislature allowing counties to propose tax increases to their citizens to fund transit.
Charlotte's voters approved the tax in a referendum. There also emerged an agreement that the state DOT would match local funding, or 25 percent of the total cost.
The federal government was expected to pay 50 percent.Now, as new lines are planned that go beyond Mecklenburg, there is a question of who will pay and how.
Will surrounding counties and localities enact their own sales taxes?
Or is Charlotte expected to be the primary local funder, even for lines outside Mecklenburg County?
And what should the role of the state transportation agency be?
It is, after all, the one agency whose jurisdiction cuts across multiple county lines.
I believe the parties should explore having the state agency take more direct responsibility for building and paying for transit within urban areas.
When the state builds a road, it takes on the burden of coordinating with all the counties it goes through. It buys land, negotiates rights of way and designs and builds a project.
Why should transit be any different?
DOTs are traditionally highway-minded, and North Carolina's is certainly no exception. But bringing these agencies into the transit fold suggests a way to turn them into allies.
Eventually, it makes sense for state transportation money to be portable and to be used for either roads or transit lines, as conditions fit.
Whatever the models developed, it's a near-certainty that the new lines here in Charlotte will be built. There is simply too much interest in this new way of living.
The Town of Brookfield's Chuck E. Cheese restaurant could lose its liquor license because boozed up adults are provoking too many police calls to the Blue Mound Rd. pizzeria.
Hold on: Does Chuck E. Cheese really need a liquor license? I thought it was a place for kids to have birthday parties and play games.
When life begins to imitate The Onion, you know things are really out of control.
Eau Claire's Compassionate Badger - - great title - - is putting out a good, pro-transit message. Check him out.
Sorry for the geographical screwup. I was talking to someone today about LaCrosse, and look what happened!
I fixed the title.
City dwellers and various allies take note: www.UrbanMilwaukee.com is worth a visit and bookmark.
Hat tip to Dan Knauss.
Legislators are still split along party lines in Michigan and have not yet agreed on bills that would implement the Great Lakes Compact in that state.
An update, here.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, (MADD), is circulating an online petition in favor of toughened drunk driving legislation, and law enforcement, in the wake of recent fatal crashes involving repeat OWN offenders.
Details here.
Voters in a rural South Dakota county in the southeastern corner of the state approved in a Tuesday referendum a rezoning to construct an oil refinery that can process 400,000 barrels of Canadian tar sand oil piped in daily.
That's much larger than the size of the 235,000 barrel-per-day capacity of the proposed refinery expansion in Superior, at the Murphy Oil refinery.
The Superior refinery currently can process 35,000 barrels per day.
We'll see if the South Dakota plan, along with expansion at refineries near Detroit and Chicago, makes the Superior plan more, or less likely.
I didn't hear all of it, but Charlie Sykes this morning administered the requisite bashing to something I posted yesterday about light rail, here.
But I did hear the three calls he took, and was that ever interesting.
UPDATE: I found the time this afternoon to listen to Charlie's podcast - - the segment begins at the 23.75 minute mark.
My personal highlight: though Charlie read the heart of my posting and was unable to utter my name, he did call me "a local lefty environmentalist tofu guy."
Hey: I object to that. I hate tofu.
But when Charlie referred to light rail supporters as "the Jim Rowens of the world," I nearly ran for a cigarette and I don't even smoke.
Anyway:
The first caller, from Fond du Lac, agreed that light rail and other forms of rail would be great for the region, introducing, as she called it, "the culture" of rail.
Charlie had to dismiss her as part of - - his words - - the sandals and tofu crowd: I love it when talk radio hosts rip their own listeners.
The second caller agreed with Charlie, in part because on a light rail train he couldn't listen to talk radio, like he does in his car.
The third caller, a self-described third-generation transit employee, came down in the middle. He said buses were better than rail in the downtown, but supported rail service to the airport and to Miller Park.
As do I.
I even mentioned the airport in my posting - - and the most recent version of urban rail, the electric guided-bus, planned a stop and station in the Miller Park lot.
And Charlie agreed with caller #3 - - sort of off-message for a righty talker - - but still interesting.
If you had rail to the airport and to Miller Park, inevitably and logically, those lines would stop at nearby destinations - - the casino, the Zoo, the Third Ward, and so forth.
That's called a system. It's how it works in other cities, even those where Charlie erroneously called their systems fiscal disasters.
The same systems that are expanding because ridership numbers have been rising even before the tipping point in gas prices was hit.
Charlie railed against rail and the subsidies, as he called them, the systems need - - as if highways aren't subsidized to the tune of billions in Wisconsin every year, with fresh billions on the way in our own backyard.
Anyhow: thanks for the discussion, Charlie. We're all making progress.
Seems that General Motors might have to return some state aid to Wisconsin because the scheduled plant closing in Janesville doesn't uphold the company's end of the bargain.
Doesn't it seem that public financial incentives to private businesses often fall flat?
GM says it "may" drop the Hummer.
May?
Anyone still wondering why this company hasn't made a profit since 2004?
Steven Filmanowicz covers a lot of ground in a superb and timely Journal Sentinel op-ed, here.
He's the communications director at the Congress for the New Urbanism, in Chicago, run by former Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist.
Yeah, there's a lot of alphabet soup in that headline - - with SEWRPC, our Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission being more obscure than the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, or General Motors.
The ironies in Wisconsin surrounding oil-related stories are really cringe-worthy:
GM pulled the plug on truck and SUV production in Janesville, and the state is apparently considering asking the company to return some of the millions of dollars in state aid the company got to keep the Janesville plant modern and open.
Sounds fair, even bold. But hold your applause.
This is the same state government that last week won final federal approval to spend $1.9 billion to rebuild and expand I-94 from Milwaukee to the Illinois state line.
$200 million of that price tag is to pay for adding a fourth lane to the corridor - - 35 miles in each direction - - even as the same gas-price shock that is closing down the Janesville GM plant is also dampening down driving, and causing a companion spike in transit use.
But the I-94 corridor reconstruction plan has no money for a stalled commuter rail project that awaits start-up funding.
And pre-construction project documentation indicates there is minimal congestion on I-94 from Milwaukee to Illinois, as is, with little reduction in commuting times expected by adding the $200-million new lane - - the same amount needed to get trains rolling from Kenosha to Racine to Milwaukee.
And the analysis to justify the highway plan was done before gas hit $4-a-gallon: that planning concluded in 2003, when gas was a lot cheaper, and SEWRPC and WisDOT projected that by 2008, gas would cost $2.51-a-gallon.
Oops.
Really big Ooooooops.
Anybody at WisDOT and SEWRPC suggesting trimming the I-94 expansion, and investing in rail?
Nah.
GM is shutting down the Janesville plant because it has a bottom line to meet and can't keep losing money selling vehicles that customers have abandoned.
SEWRPC doesn't have to meet the same kind of bottom line.
Its financing is automatic, with millions in property tax dollars for operations transferred to its treasury quietly each fall from seven county budgets.
And WisDOT just collects gas tax revenues, various vehicle fees and millions in bonding income, which. protected by both parties, legislators and Governors, it turns over to contractors to build more roads, and little new transit service.
GM has to deal with the market.
WisDOT and SEWRPC can ignore it.
Put yourself in the position of a Janesville GM worker.
Your job is disappearing, but the state government is still taking your tax money and sending it to Southeastern Wisconsin - - the entire 25-30 year freeway plan calls for $6.5 billion in transit-free construction - - to build more roads that you and the rest of us will probably use less.
There is news of an overnight traffic crash in Racine County caused by an allegedly-drunken OWI violator with two previous convictions.
Under current Wisconsin law, that second conviction is only a misdemeanor: you have to be convicted a 5th time in Wisconsin for OWI before you've committed a felony and finally stand a decent chance of being removed for a substantial time from our highways.
Then we have the drunken rampage that ruined RiverSplash downtown.
Surprised? C'mon.
Some of these festivals have devolved into drinking festivals, and are less about the music and other entertainment.
I stopped going to RiverSplash years ago, even though my last two jobs - - in City Hall and at the newspaper - - put me literally at the festival's front door.
After a while - - and this is true for me regarding Summerfest, too - - you get tired of walking around with a bunch of people who are only there to get their big cups of beer, then get louder than the band.
Extending beer sales out onto the street at RiverSplash, with the routine heavy drinking that takes place nearby on Water Street, is asking for trouble.
Other cities seem to be able to carry off street festivals more easily (the big obvious exceptions being Madison's Mifflin St. Block Party and the annual riot there called Halloween), because when it's all about the booze, trouble will follow.
Spiking gas prices killed Janesville's GM plant, where big SUV's and gas-guzzling light trucks were made.
The company chased the bigger, short-term profits available in $30,000 SUV's, with bigger engines, while foreign producers invested in smaller cars and hybrid engines.
None of this is news.
The plant, its employes and the community are now paying the price.
Yet, somehow, Charlie Sykes this morning has decided it's Herb Kohl's fault for voting against drilling for oil in the Arctic, where a relatively small amount of crude could be extracted that would flow to the world market.
Then he warned us against electing pro-litigation liberals in the fall.
And now he's going off against cap-and-trade carbon trading, and in favor of nuclear energy.
Free-associating by right-wing ideologues when the marketplace they worship bites back does not make for enlightening radio.
It's my pleasure to offer another in an occasional series of guest posts by environmental experts.
This one, by Erin O'Brien of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, is about recent violations by a major pipeline contractor. I appreciate that there are photos available through a link, below.
*****
The permit authorizing construction of Enbridge’s 321-mile pipeline, included 115 environmental conditions, and concluded:
The proposed project, if constructed in accordance with this permit (emphasis added), will not result in significant adverse impacts to wetland functional values, will not adversely affect water quality, and will not increase water pollution in surface waters.
Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) referred Enbridge to the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ)for multiple violations of these wetland and waterway protection conditions.
The official allegations remain confidential pending DOJ’s review and action, but by Wisconsin Wetlands Association’s count, the case is built upon close to, if not more than, 181 separate alleged violations. *(see footnote)
DOJ is not obligated to pursue the case, but the documentation submitted for each alleged violation, including written reports and photographs (click here for examples), present a compelling case in favor of prosecution.
State law allows for fines anywhere from $10 - $5,000 per incident, per day, though these cases often settle before going to trial.
Civil prosecution and fines may, or may not, enhance the clean-up. The permit already requires Enbridge to re-assemble, re-vegetate, and monitor the recovery of impacted wetlands and waterways.
This work is guaranteed with a $5 million bond which the DNR can use to hire contractors if Enbridge doesn’t get the job done.
The restoration and monitoring conditions represent the promises Enbridge made in exchange for permission to build, but the case before the DOJ is about resolution of the promises and laws that Enbridge broke.
In recent coverage of the referral, Enbridge describes the violations as minor infractions and brags about its rapid response to environmental concerns along the corridor.
Individually, some of the violations are minor, but cumulatively they add up to substantial impacts. And even if every violation was minor, the sheer volume is inexcusable.
Pipeline construction IS inherently messy. But sending a crew out to clean up a mess is not the same as reducing impacts through strict adherence to permit conditions.
Some messes can be cleaned up, but others such as releasing a sediment plume into a running river, burying the wetland seedbank beneath impermeable subsoils and accidentally clearing wetland trees result in permanent degradation.
The State of Wisconsin now has to decide what to do about the portions of Enbridge’s mess that could and should have been avoided. Civil penalties, or a comparable settlement, would prove to Enbridge and the concerned public that the state expects compliance with the environmental conditions attached to construction approvals.
*Based on data reported by Independent Environmental Monitors in daily compliance monitoring reports since construction began in January 2007.
Some crazy activist judge forces the Bush administration to release scientific findings on climate change.
Noah Hall sums it up, with an emphasis on water issues, here.
Just for the record...let's remember that in 1997, it was then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, The Man Who Loved Trains And Later Yearned To Be US Secretary of Transportation, who killed his administration's light rail plan for Milwaukee.
Had Tommy stood up to the local conservative talk radio hosts who still use "light rail" as an all-purpose anti-urban code phrase, workers and students commuting from Waukesha could be riding the rails with some of that $4-gallon gas money in their pockets.
Hundreds of thousands of riders a year would be taking the train to Miller Park.
New stations would be on the drawing board in advance of construction-hell in the Zoo Interchange coming for four years beginning in 2012.
With light rail leading the way, the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter line would also be operating, because the public, enamored of rail's conveniences in the city, and to the west, would also have wanted, demanded, a rail option to the south - - especially as they are looking at eight years of construction from the Mitchell Interchange all the way to Illinois on I-94.
And downtown would be serviced by both systems, connecting at the new InterModal station, then branching across the city to the airport and the suburbs, as is happening in many cities nationally.
Saint Tommy, Patron Saint of Wisconsin Rail.
Or, Prescient Tommy, who could have wowed us with his knowledge of Peak Oil and sustainability.
Coulda had the last word. Coulda been right as rain.
Or been Courageous Tommy, brave enough to speak the truth to big talkers.
And definitely been The Genuinely Conservative Tommy, which is what he claimed to have been in the early presidential primaries - - conservative... as in conservator of resources, and provider of choices.
The visionary who took on the state's highway-only, overly-expensive one-dimensionality - - and won. For the public.
But Tommy was too interested in playing it safe, sticking to the script, and sticking it to Milwaukee, too.
First he cut off funding to the plan his very own transportation department created - - "not one nickel" was the administration's oh-so-cheap slogan in retreat - - then signed a state budget into law that made it illegal to spend any state money for further study of light rail in Milwaukee.
Madison, legal.
Kenosha, legal - - and trolleys are running in the downtown there again.
But for Milwaukee: do a little study...do a little time.
A little more spine, a little more chutzpah, and Tommy could be playing The Greeter In the Engineer's Cap out on the platform at New Berlin, or in the Valley, or downtown, gettin' hugs and slappin' high-fives and takin' all the credit for doin' the impossible and makin' rail transit happen in Milwaukee.
All the plaudits for the business development and infrastructure investment and job creation that would have made the whole darn Milwaukee 7 region hum - - all that would be his, and deserved.
Hell, Milwaukee'd probably by now have given Tommy a medal
But Tommy made sure the train stayed stalled, and in doing so, lost his opportunity for a signal, historic achievement.
Missed also is the opportunity, our collective community opportunity, to have been - - for once - - ahead of the curve, leading in transit and energy savings and in cleaner air.
Leading by example. by been prepared for problems rather than scrambling for solutions, and worse, now having Scott Walker, a Tommy creation, presiding over the slow demise of Milwaukee County's struggling bus system.
Tommy could have helped put Milwaukee on the road to greatness in the 21st century - - a more vibrant city at the center of a prosperous region - - with the right resources in place at the right time to handle this new and tougher economy.
Tommy blew it.
The Journal Sentinel's NewsWatch blog today reports the arrest of a New Berlin driver in Greenfield for his sixth OWI.
Wisconsin's most recent changes to our state's relatively weak drunk driving statutes (when compared to most other states) only addressed OWI convictions seven-through-nine.
Wisconsin is the only state which treats a first offense as a non-criminalized ticketing offense, and even a fourth OWI conviction in Wisconsin remains a misdemeanor.
You don't get to the felony level until conviction number five, by which time the risk of a crash and harm to the driver and others has multiplied.
The highly-publicized, recent triple-fatality crash in Oconomowoc was allegedly caused by a driver with three prior OWI convictions, but who had not yet reported to jail to begin serving a 75-day misdemeanor sentence for his 4th conviction.
If we defined repeat drunk driving offenses as equivalent to the repeated firing of a gun down a highway, the penalties would be swifter, tougher and more effective.
It is regrettable that the legislature continues to treat this dangerous and tragic situation with such passivity.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation department (WisDOT) wants to widen E. Capitol Drive. through the Village of Shorewood, at the expense of more than 40 trees and a whole lot of peace of mind, reports the Daily Reporter.
This single sentence high in reporter Sean Ryan's story sums it up:
"The village and WisDOT are bound to have conflicting priorities, said Chris Swartz, village manager, because the state’s priority is to rapidly move vehicles through the village."
I can't decide if WisDOT is run on masochism, pure arrogance, or complete disconnection from the good people of the state who pay the taxes and fees that keep WisDOT staffers employed.
You want to stir up a hornet's nest?
Shorewood is a fine place in southeastern Wisconsin to do it.
This reminds me of an ugly plan that WisDOT sprung on a mile or so of tree-lined S. 27th St. (Layton Blvd.) in Milwaukee in 1999.
S. 27th St. was listed as a state highway (41), as is E. Capitol Dr. (190), which gave WisDOT the authority to try and rebuild it to move traffic faster, with easier access for trucks, through what was and remains an historic Milwaukee residential area.
The south side corridor, including the famous "Doctor's Row" of lovely homes and churches, has sidewalks filled with kids and seniors, shoppers, renters and homeowners.
The section of s. 27th St. targeted for widening by WisDOT contained 280 mature trees.
E. Capitol Dr. is the main east-west road through Shorewood - - a community of one-square-mile just north of the City of Milwaukee line - - that also has that same mix of old and young, shops, schools, churches and residents right on and close to E. Capitol Dr.
Long story short: The S. 27th St. expansion didn't happen.
Then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist (yes, I was working for him at the time) and his south side neighbors (yes, WisDOT picked highway-fighter Norquist's backyard for expansion) in the Historic Layton Boulevard Neighborhood Association gave WisDOT officials a deservedly-outraged thrashing, and now-retired Journal Sentinel columnist Whitney Gould raised a substantial alarm, too.
That was quite the anti-expansion trifecta, let me tell you.
So S. 27th St. got rebuilt and repaved only within its existing configuration, and maps and signage got changed to tell out-of-state truckers that their best route in, out and around the city was I-94, and did not include a trip on S. 27th St. (details here).
It was a simple solution to a really bad idea, but it took work.
Shorewood needs to gather its allies and raise its voice to achieve the same outcome, or residents there will find themselves on a more-intentioned truck-and-commuter route that is totally out-of-character with their community.
The current Workforce Development Secretary has held a tough and thankless job longer than any of her predecessors. Congratulations are deserved.
If hurricanes hit, and gas spikes again, don't worry - - you always save money jump on the local light rail.
If you are in Baltimore, Denver, Portland, San Diego, Minneapolis...
Or Chicago's "El," DC's Metro, New York's subway...
Even vintage trolleys in Memphis, New Orleans and Kenosha.
Just not in Milwaukee, as Mayor Barrett notes.
More attention is needed by policy-makers to combat global warming and its many ramifications, says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a Sunday editorial.
I completely agree.
But the same editorial board has also endorsed policies that either contribute to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions or fail to assertively address them.
The paper is on record urging eased anti-smog federal regulations in southeastern Wisconsin, and supports adding a traffic lane to I-94 between Milwaukee and the Illinois line, despite little evidence that there is congestion in that corridor that needs $200 million more concrete.
And is adding a lane right in the heart of what federal regulators say is already a dirty air zone the right way to reduce air pollution - - especially since the feds announced a few weeks ago that, nationally, areas precisely like those in southeastern Wisconsin and along Lake Michigan with smoggy air are going to have to meet tougher standards in the future?
At the local level, should we induce traffic to clean the air?
With the global picture in mind, should we encourage traffic to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Yes, the paper has called for much-needed commuter rail along the corridor, but when the regional freeway reconstruction and expansion plan was approved in 2003 - - including the I-94 Milwaukee-to-Illinois segment - - no rail or bus additions or initiatives were included.
Southeastern Wisconsin needs more transit, and it needs cleaner air, too - - twin goals, both worthy and linked.
We're constantly told that highway expansion is the key to economic development, when, in fact, rail lines stimulate economic growth, too, from housing to retail to the long-term, well-paying jobs that keep the trains running and serviced.
Smog, unhealthy air and non-existent transit systems, on the other hand, are economic turnoffs - - for potential tourists, business relocations, incoming students and all the people who already live and work here.
Climate change is a tremendously complex set of issues, and certainly difficult to effect globally from one medium-sized city in the US Midwest.
But real opportunities to make a difference do exist in our own backyard - - and are within our grasp - - but we need much more visionary public officials, with editorial boards pushing them, to get the right things done.
Saturday's Journal Sentinel editorial on transportation policy says that in southeastern Wisconsin, the choice should not be highways or rail, that an either/or dynamic is wrong.
Thus the paper renews its support for the widening and rebuilding of I-94 from Milwaukee to the Illinois state line, and for the construction of the commuter rail line in the same corridor.
The problem is that the state has made it an either or decision: $1.9 billion for the highway project, including $200 million for the new, added lane, and zero dollars for the commuter rail line - - which has a $200 million price tag.
Furthermore: the I-94 construction project is part of a $6.5 billion regional highway reconstruction and remodeling - - again, zero dollars for any transit upgrade or initiative.
Who wrote the plan?
SEWRPC - - the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - using a $1 million grant from the state transportation department - - and without whose recommendation a highway plan using this much federally-originating gas tax money could not proceed.
The plan was written in 2003 and received with approval, not surprisingly, by the state that paid for it.
Now flash forward to 2008: the state transportation department says traffic projections by SEWRPC justify the I-94 project, and the feds signed off on the plan last week.
Again - - no surprise.
It is a closed loop, planned and implemented by and with state and federal dollars spent in Southeastern Wisconsin predicated on the either/or scenario.
Highways, yes. $6.5 billion worth between 2004-2030.
Rail and other transit, no new dollars, even as the price of gas is spiking and the $6.5 billion highway plan is based on driving projections with gasoline costing $2.30.
This imbalance in planning and spending on transportation is embedded because the lobbies for highways are stronger, better-positioned and richer than are the advocates for transit.
And because the planning and implementation for transportation in Southeastern Wisconsin arises in Madison and in SEWRPC's suburban and exurban base, all of which is disconnected from transit users centered in Milwaukee, Racine, older suburbs like West Allis and universities.
This all may change when gasoline prices cripple the sprawl economies, and upper-income residents in distant subdivisions, rather than move back to the cities, will begin to demand what they will define as their fair share of transit services.
Then we'll get commuter rail, and maybe, maybe, better urban transit systems, too, but at a much higher cost then what would have been required if the political powers in Madison and at the regional level had been less biased against cities and transit users the last 50 years.
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker says tough times means the county has to privatize more services.
The context is his 2009 budget, but the real target is his 2010 gubernatorial campaign commercials.
One county board supervisor urged Walker to stop submitting phony budgets.
What? And ruin a campaign strategy?
