Conservative Blogger Goes After New SEWRPC Leader

The conservative blogger and Marquette University prof. John McAdams goes after Ken Yunker, executive director of SEWRPC for just a few days, over SEWRPC's support of the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line.

The post is here.

I wasn't at the discussion that McAdams attended, so I make just this observation - -SEWRPC seems to have a tough time finding allies, and I trace this phenomenon to one basic fact:

The agency's historic unwillingness and inability to build grassroots support.

SEWRPC has mishandled so much of its outreach - - whether by holding or participating in public meetings that tamp down aired comments, to dismissing written comments, to avoiding meaningfully diverse hirings and committee appointments, to dissing its Justice Task Force, to rolling over Milwaukee City and County objections to freeway lane expansion at the cost of tens of millions of dollars in taxable property.

And so forth.

Even its ongoing recruiting for the newly-created position of outreach and public relations coordinator has been botched, as the post was not discussed with the Justice Task force, suggesting yet another tightly-controlled, or like Yunker's ascension to executive director, a stage-managed in-house promotion.

SEWRPC is, as we speak, holding a series of meetings on its proposed water supply recommendations, and as one expert observed after one of the meetings last week, in so many words - - 'if there's no crisis, and Waukesha has more than one option to obtain a worthy supply, why did SEWRPC pick one alternative and recommend it rather than saying that there's a variety of options and they all have merit?'

Good question - - and along with SEWRPC's inability to launch its 34-year-delayed housing study, it's fair to ask what Yunker's plan is for getting the agency back on credible legs before an increasingly skeptical public.