State Senate Approves Compact 32-1; Lazich Still Says "No."

The vote on the Great Lakes Compact today: 32-1 in the State Senate.

And though her home town of New Berlin will be the first community in the entire eight-state Great Lakes region to win a diversion of water under the Compact's newly-defined rules, State Sen. Mary Lazich cast the Senate's only "no" vote.

She had earlier called the plan dictatorial when the Senate initially approved it in March, 26-6.

Today's more lopsided vote approved an amended version with changes crafted primarily by her party.

A link to her high-decibel floor speech in opposition, prior to the earlier Senate vote, is here.

Her anti-Compact allies in Ohio - - state's righters, Ron Paul/anti-UN extremists and others - - are still carrying on this losing fight.

Lazich even fought New Berlin Mayor Jack Chiovatero on the bill, and ripped Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, even though Milwaukee is the likely seller of the water that Chiovatero says his community needs.

Yeah - - let's not take this regional cooperation thing too far, right?

New Berlin voters: Do you give Lazich points for consistency or demerits for obstinacy and sheer, self-destructive ideological blindness?

I'll bet you, however, that she shows up at the ribbon cutting when New Berlin opens the spigot and fresh, Lake Michigan water flows across the subcontinental divide to make the city's major new water park and convention center hotel a success.

And feeds more development and tax base growth in her own backyard.