Again, And Again...Why Is Milwaukee Still Enmeshed With SEWRPC?

In June, 2008, I argued in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sunday op-ed that the City of Milwaukee - - through Milwaukee County - - was getting nothing out of a continuing relationship with SEWRPC, the unelected, unrepresentative pro-suburban regional planning commission that spends millions of public dollars annually but often gives Milwaukee and its minority citizens the back of its bureaucratic hand.

On Tuesday, SEWRPC provided another example of just how insidiously unproductive is that relationship for Milwaukee and for other disadvantaged groups and communities when it intentionally disregarded nearly a year's work by SEWRPC's Environmental Justice Task Force.

So I again ask Milwaukee County Supervisors, as they prepare the County's 2011 budget and its guaranteed $400,000+ taxpayer grant to SEWRPC - - and I also ask Milwaukee aldermen who two years ago directed its state legislative lobbyists to find a better planning structure that honored Milwaukee and an urban agenda: what are you doing to address this ongoing taxation without representation at SEWRPC and its open disregard for tens of thousands of Milwaukee city and county residents?

When will you say: Enough is enough?