Blog Postings This Week Focus On Water, Open Records

I will use the blog this week to reference documents from several Open Records requests, or commentary based on records or their requests.

Here is the first: an account of the close-and-easy relationship between the general managers of the water utilities in Milwaukee and Waukesha.

Now I know it makes sense that these officials exchange information, as the fraternity of water utility managers in Wisconsin is small.

And in this case, Waukesha's Dan Duchniak and Milwaukee's Carrie Lewis sit on the regional planning commission's water study advisory committee, where they both voted to approve a preliminary (hint: read as 'soon to-be-qpproved.') recommendation approving a sale of Lake Michigan water by Milwaukee to Waukesha.

You can read a lengthy description of the study's conclusion, here: Work you way to p. 57, fyi.

But is Dan Duchniak the best source of legal information for Carrie Lewis if she has a technical legal question about how diversion negotiations as spelled out in the Great Lakes Compact and in Wisconsin statutes?

Anyway: more later this week, including details of Waukesha's full court lobbying press in Milwaukee City Hall orchestrated by former Milwaukee Ald. Michael D'Amato, now a registered lobbyist working for Duchniak's Waukesha Water Utility through former Gov. Martin Schreiber's public relations and lobbying firm.