SEWRPC Dooming Its Justice Task Force

I've attended several of the meetings held by SEWRPC's relatively-new Environmental Justice Task Force, and it's time to ask:

Why does the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - 100% paid for by the taxpayers in seven area counties - - want this important group to fail?

Created in 2007 (eight meetings in 18 months) following SEWRPC's contentious 2004 federal re-certification review - - a crucial quadrennial evaluation through which the agency keeps its power to greenlight major highway projects - - the EJFT was supposed to be SEWRPC's formal link to low-income and minority communities shut out for decades from regional planning and agency hiring.

Even today, only three of SEWRPC's 49 staff professional are minorities, and SEWRPC's offices are in a remote, Pewaukee location far from the region's low-income and minority residential clusters in Milwaukee and Racine.

And none of the 32-members of the agency's water supply advisory committee were African-American - - not a first-time advisory committee makeup in an agency where the committees do much of the basic work, are provided with paid consultants and thus wield power.

But SEWRPC's working relationship with its task force is strained, to say the least.

Last year, when the task force learned SEWRPC was about to designate a new Executive Director with a no-advertising, in-house promotion, it asked the agency to slow down the process so it could weigh in.

In other words, to do its job.

Request refused; then Deputy Director Ken Yunker's pre-ordained hiring was affirmed.

The task force in 2008 voted to recommend to SEWRPC that all agency studies have outside experts write the socio-economic analysis to make sure that perspective was included.

Insulted by the suggestion, SEWRPC shot it down.

And SEWRPC is about to hire a public relations/outreach specialist - - a job right down the task force alley, but the task force was not included in that hiring process.

It appears as if the time and energy of a very dedicated group of citizens and local officials is being wasted, as the agency treats the task force as little more than window-dressing.

From my perspective, it's another reason why Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee need to remove themselves from SEWRPC, withdraw their annual $845,000 property tax donation, and create a planning agency with a genuine urban agenda, and a management team that truly respects public participation.

An interim suggestion - - and one that could help the task force with its self-evaluation SEWRPC says the task force will do this summer:

The task force could adopt its own agenda on housing, water, job development, transit and other pressing issues, elect its own officers, and take its very important mission directly to other groups and to media on behalf of the groups that SEWRPC told federal evaluators the task force would serve.

And as the feds process all the feedback (heavily negative) it got from local residents and officials during the still-incomplete 2008 evaluation, SEWRPC's dismissive treatment of the task force should be added as an important item for SEWRPC's correction.