The June Great Lakes water session in Sheboygan waters itself down

[Originally posted 5/24/19]

All that's missing are opening remarks from Scott Walker.

I'd earlier noted the ironies and contradictions posed in an annual Great Lakes' water preservation and policy session scheduled in Sheboygan June 5th-7th - - the same city where a lakeshore golf course plan in a water-dependent nature preserve - - 

Steve Back photo

- - stirred strong opposition and has been blocked by a judge over wetland filling, water quality issues and planning deficiencies. I need to emphasize that the judge in the case at this level is what is known as an Administrative Law Judge - - in Wisconsin, a non-partisan fact-finder - - and the case will no doubt end up in front of elected judges and our heavily politicized Supreme Court.

But it's important that at the first step, a neutral fact-finder found the permit invalid.

Now a look at the meeting's agenda shows its credibility being further watered down.

* I note in the meeting's Delegate Program Agenda that current US EPA Great Lakes regional official and former Wisconsin DNR climate change censor Cathy Stepp is a speaker on the opening day.

Of course she's a speaker about development - - waterfront commerce, to be specific - - given that her priority running the DNR for Walker was implementing his 'chamber of commerce mentality' directive.

An insult to the DNR's purposes that had not strong local and tribal opposition presented itself, sacred ground, wetlands, clean water and unique hills in North Western Wisconsin would have been excavated for decades of massive open-pit iron ore mining for which Walker and Stepp were cheerleading. 

Just as she also waxed enthusiastic about the Foxconn debacle now unfolding on former ag and wetlands, and backed suspending environmental reviews and regulatory norms for the project.

Perhaps she can highlight this kind of waterfront development devastation for the shoreline next to one of the most scenic vistas on Lake Michigan next to a state park's beaches described in the DNR's environmental impact statement on the golf course which the agency's managers in Sepp's mold ignored when they approved the project's wetland fill permit that is now on hold:

Tree clearing would occur on the Property for each hole, the access road, the clubhouse/parking lot complex, the practice range, the maintenance facility, the restrooms, and the irrigation pond. Tree clearing may also occur in forested areas between tee and fairways to provide lines of sight...

Some trees bordering the beach would be removed, allowing longer sight lines between the Project and Lake Michigan. Trees present in dune habitat that is utilized by a rare species may not be able to be removed unless additional authorizations are obtained (i.e., an incidental take permit). Additionally, the number and area of trees removed would have to be reviewed to determine the potential impacts on the beach/dune community... 

The site’s nearly 100% forested canopy would be reduced by nearly half...

Approximately 3.7 acres of wetland would be lost due to filling including impacts to approximately 1.36 acres of Great Lakes ridge and swale wetlands, a wetland type that is considered “imperiled” in Wisconsin. Additional wetland impacts resulting from alterations to wetland hydrology and the influence of increased nutrients could change the wetland type and allow encroachment of invasive species.

Reduction of the forest to 50 percent cover would result in a substantial reduction of available migratory bird stopover habitat on the Kohler Property. Interior forest bird nesting habitat is likely present within and adjacent to the Project boundary and would essentially be eliminated...

Short term adverse impacts that cannot be avoided include approximately two years of construction traffic, noise, and dust. Hikers on the Black River Trail near the Black River would be the Kohler-Andrae patrons most likely to notice construction noise and changed aesthetics...

It is unknown to what extent storm water infiltration and nutrient and pesticide applications to fairways, tees and greens (for either establishment or maintenance) would impact groundwater quality in this permeable soil and shallow water table environment.

Stepp, seriously? After designating staff to work closely with the Kohler team to make the eventual wetland permit approval a reality - - and at no cost to the developer?

And after gutting her agency, mocking its mission, deleting scientific information and wishing out loud that she'd preferred managing her McDonald's workers than state agency professionals. 

Details, here.

And do you think Stepp will stay through the session's second morning when a real expert the realities of climate change which I'd discovered she'd stripped from the DNR's website. 

Climate change censors driven by science denial and obeisance to polluters these days at the GOP-managed, Scott Walker-redefined "chamber of commerce mentality" Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources are at it again... 

Gone are references to known "human activities" contributing to a warming planet, warming's contributions to changes in rainfall and snowfall patterns, extreme weather events, drought, species and economic losses as a result among other truths whitewashed off this official, taxpayer-financed website.
Chillingly, this entire line - - with its positive message and a call to action - - is now deleted:

The good news is that we can all work to slow climate change and lessen its effects.

As are multiple links to climate change resources, many specific to the Great Lakes materials - - despite the title of the page - - "The Great Lakes and a changing world."

Stepp did all that in response to one conservative writer's suggestion, the Journal Sentinel reported:

The Lakeland Times reported that Wisconsin's environmental protection agency removed information saying humans and greenhouse gases are the main causes of climate change two days after the newspaper raised the issue with Secretary Cathy Stepp...

The DNR updated a web page on the Great Lakes on Dec. 21, saying climate change is a matter of scientific debate, striking sentences attributing global warming to human activities and rising levels of carbon dioxide.

The expert whose session Stepp will probably skip previewed his talk with definitive language - -  "Climate change is causing significant and far-reaching impacts on the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region" - -  and is described in the program this way:

In Conversation with Dr. Don Wuebbles 

Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Basin and How to Move Forward

Donald J. Wuebbles is the Harry E. Preble Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Illinois and is an expert in atmospheric physics and chemistry. As an award winning, world renowned climate scientist with over 500 scientific publications and research on the Great Lakes, he brings a unique and important perspective to waterfront communities especially surrounding the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. He has co-authored a number of international and national scientific assessments, including several international climate assessments led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for which IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He co-led the first volume of the 4^th U.S. National Climate Assessment published in November 2017 that assesses the science of climate change, and co-authored Volume II published in November 2018. Dr. Wuebbles worked with 17 scientists and other experts in producing the 2019 Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on the Great Lakes.

* And here's something in between tone-deaf 'planning' and in-your-face-disrespecl when the owner of the golf course project which Stepp's DNR greenlit, and which has been blocked by a judge, is the host of the meeting's closing dinner. 

On the Delegate Program Agenda, Kohler Co. is listed as the "Gala sponsor."

GALA SPONSOR:

Gala Dinner at the American Club (All attendees welcome)

6:00 pm -7:00 pm

Cocktail Hour

7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Dinner and Entertainment

WI dismisses climate science as roads, farms and lives suffer

[Updated four times from 7/21/17]

8/8:

Wisconsin's 2017 rainfall setting records:

Records date back 123 years.

7/23:

For perspective - - Many Western Wisconsin roads and other infrastructure washed out in 2016 floods are still not rebuilt; one NW local official says he has seen a dozen 100-year-storms in the last 30 years, while a state official says road-building standards have not caught up with "evidence...pointing towards increasing frequency of large" storm events.

The state upgraded culverts and made improvements where possible while trying to restore travel routes as quickly as possible last summer, said Gary Brunner, chief project development engineer with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. And while making quick and quality repairs is crucial, Brunner said there is a need to look at how the state plans for storms like the one that ripped across northern Wisconsin.

"We do know that evidence is pointing towards increasing frequency of large events like this," Brunner said. "I don’t think the standards have really caught up in terms of how we should try to design for the future, because you also have to think about how are we going to pay for designing for the future..."

Brunner said it would break the bank if every local government tried to engineer roads to withstand 500-year to 1,000-year flood events like last July’s flood. Many towns have struggled to pay for repairs just to return them to their condition before the storm. Some local governments who have finished work are still waiting to be paid.

Imagine.

But you don't have to imagine that no one raised the alarm last year.

State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, (D-Alma), said after the 2016 floods:

Repairing rural roads is a huge challenge for every town board. For many years, the state budget provided less money than towns needed to keep up with routine wear and tear on roads. With the recent floods, new problems appeared and old problems are worse.

Likewise, conservation structures – dams and so forth – were not built to handle the storms we experienced. Again, state support has lagged behind needs.

Or that the US EPA hadn't been raising the alarm since 2003 - - a warning to local officials I heard for myself - - and which I have repeatedly cited on this blog:

Then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and I attended a conference in Chicago in 2003, hosted by Mayor Richard Daley, where officials from the EPA told Midwestern elected leaders that climate change models predicted heavier rain events.

The EPA officials were urging the Midwestern leaders to adapt their planning and spending to more aggressively confront storm water and related services because heavier, intense rains were going to be come more frequent.

Part of the message was: forget the notion of the "100-year-storm." They'll come more often than that in the Midwest as the atmosphere warms.

And when I discovered last year that the Wisconsin DNR under Scott Walker had deleted climate change science and published data from its webpages, it deleted specific information about a warming climate tripping off more rain and flooding, including deletions like this which you can see for yourself:

Changes in rain and snowfall patterns (including more frequent and severe storms) could change water flow in streams and rivers and increase stream bank erosion and runoff pollution.

 ---------------------------------------------

Updated 7/22:

Flood emergency disaster declarations for 17 additional Wisconsin Counties brings the current total to 20, or nearly 30% of the state's 72 counties.]
----------------------------------
With apologies to Bob Dylan, you don't have to be a weatherman to know that Western Wisconsin has again been hammered with storms since last summer's road-and-bridge-breaking onslaught.

But as I wrote at the time:

Despite major floods, WI has zero interest in climate change  

Yet across the state, Southern Wisconsin keeps getting soaked as both the days and nights heat up:

Thursday’s high in Madison was 87 at 4:01 p.m., 5 degrees above the normal high... Thursday’s low in Madison was 67 at 5:38 a.m., 6 degrees above the normal low... 

For meteorological summer (June through August), Madison’s precipitation total rose to 11.4 inches, 4.09 inches above normal. The 2017 total rose to 27.06 inches, 7.92 inches above normal.

And to the suffering Southeast:

Millions in flood damage, millions of gallons of sewer overflows in Racine, Walworth, Kenosha counties

And 600 damaged properties just in Racine County two days ago.

So are these so-called 100-year storm events, or more or less weekly Wisconsin happenings?

Well, don't ask any of those science-types.

Because the state for ideological reasons has officially stopped recognizing the obvious implications of climate change and publishing such information on public sites.

But note how many of these issues were dealt with by a detailed, February, 2010 report, including data and charts showing: 

Wisconsin has become warmer, especially at night, and wetter...

More frequent extreme precipitation events... 

More warming at night...and more warming up north and away
from Lake Michigan 

...issued by the highly-respected, science-based, data-driven Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts, (WICCI) program.

Change in Annual Average Precipitation (inches) from 1950 to 2006

From 1950 to 2006, Wisconsin as a whole has become wetter, with an increase in annual precipitation of 3.1 inches. This observed increase in annual precipitation has primarily occurred in southern and western Wisconsin, while northern Wisconsin has experienced some drying.

Yet Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp has stepped away from the climate change initiative, according to the Lakeland Times newspaper last year: 

...Stepp says the agency's partnership with WICCI has come to an end.

The agency was heavily involved in the 2011 assessment by WICCI that still serves as the group's benchmark, but Stepp says those days are long gone.

"That was a study that was done through a lot of different partners and the former DNR under the past administration was very involved in that," she said. "We are not involved in that anymore."

On climate science, WI DNR's Cathy Stepp out of step

Here's a sequence of events to add to your "What They're Missing About Climate Change" file begun, perhaps, when you learned that Wisconsin DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp had recently overseen the removal of climate change information from another of the agency's climate change web pages - - the one that covered Great Lakes climate change.


Pay attention to the contrasting attention to detail below:

*  On December 12, 2016 the US-Canadian International Joint Commission, the Great Lakes management body created by a 1909 treaty, published, as if often does, some interesting reports. 

One was titled:

The State of Climate Change Science in the Great Lakes Basin

Climate change is posing significant risks to communities, health and well-being, the economy, and the natural environment. These impacts are expected to become more severe, unless concerted efforts to reduce emissions are undertaken.

Climate change effects are being experienced in the Great Lakes. Effects observed across the basin include warming temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, decreased ice coverage, and variations to historic fluctuations of water levels. For example, over the last 60 years (1950-2010), the Great Lakes basin has experienced an increase in average annual air temperatures between 0.8-2.0 degrees C (1.4-3.6 F), with this warming trend projected to continue, according to a 2015 State of Climate Change Science in the Great Lakes basin report...

Recognizing the potential impacts of climate change on Great Lakes water quality and ecosystem health, Canada and the United States incorporated a Climate Change Impacts Annex in the 2012 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA). The Annex is focused on coordinating efforts to identify, quantify, understand, and predict climate impacts on the quality of waters of the Great Lakes, and sharing information that Great Lakes resource managers need to proactively address these impacts. Implementation of this Annex is led by Environment and Climate Change Canada and US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

*  A second December 12, 2016 report, featuring Toronto and Milwaukee, was titled:

Great Lakes Cities Prepare for a Changing Climate

On the opposite end of the Great Lakes is Milwaukee, where officials believe the greatest threat from climate change is an increased risk of severe storms causing major flooding. Milwaukee suffered “100-year storms” in 2008 and 2010 that caused stormwater and sanitary sewer system back-ups and subsequent backflows into people’s homes. Erick Shambarger, environmental sustainability director for Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office, said the city put together a “flooding study task force” following the 2010 storm – recognizing that severe storms are on course to become more frequent in the future. Milwaukee’s sewer infrastructure isn’t built to withstand storms of that magnitude, he said. 

The city is tackling the problem in multiple ways. Milwaukee has implemented a “Green Streets Stormwater Management Plan,” Shambarger said. That means any time a street is reconstructed due to pothole or pavement issues, it is inspected to see what sort of infrastructure would work there to contend with major rain events...  

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has its own project to help deal with flood risks with the County Grounds Basin, a way of containing heavy amounts of rain in a specific area to avoid floods. The $90 million project can retain and store 315 million gallons of water during a severe storm, bringing excess water from the Underwood Creek into the basin by way of an underground tunnel... 

Elsewhere in the city, Shambarger said officials are considering converting unoccupied, abandoned and foreclosed properties into storm reservoirs, channeling that backflow floodwater to those properties’ basements to spare occupied homes...The basements would be covered with turf after the house is demolished so that it can better fit in within the neighborhoods. 

Shambarger added that Milwaukee officials also are interested in combating the “heat island effect,” where the pavement causes the area around it to get hotter than it would otherwise. This could include removing pavement, which in turn helps the stormwater runoff issue... 

Milwaukee has set up a Better Buildings Challenge to cut energy use in commercial buildings throughout the city, offering free assessments and loan financing to building owners that want to upgrade their properties. These can range from adding renewable energy sources to improving energy or water efficiency. Shambarger said the city also has residential programs to help homeowners purchase solar panels for their homes or to secure loans for energy efficiency upgrades, and is working to improve energy efficiency at manufacturing plants. 

“Everything we’re talking about is adapting to climate change, but that’s all in addition to work on energy efficiency and climate mitigation,” Shambarger said.

*  On December 22, 2016, I noticed and reported that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources had the previous day heavily edited its web page on climate change and the Great Lakes by deleting all references to the human influences on climate change as well as all uses of the words "climate change" from the page.

*  On December 29, 2016, DNR spokesman James Dick verified the web page editing and said to Madison TV station WKOW, Channel 27 that the DNR knew climate change was no longer being debated among climate scientists:

"Yes, we are aware of that...," Dick said. 

*  On January 10th, Dick also confirmed that the DNR page had been edited following an inquiry from a conservative staffer at a central Wisconsin weekly newspaper:

The Lakeland Times reported that Wisconsin's environmental protection agency removed information saying humans and greenhouse gases are the main causes of climate change two days after the newspaper raised the issue with Secretary Cathy Stepp.

“After questioning from The Lakeland Times, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has changed its climate-change web page to reflect a policy of neutrality on its causes and effects, rather than embracing the dramatic manmade hypothesis the web page has touted since the Doyle administration,” the paper reported on Friday.

DNR spokesman Jim Dick on Monday acknowledged the paper raised the issue with [Secretary Cathy] Stepp during an interview.

"The Lakeland Times reporter did bring that particular Great Lakes web page to our attention during a phone call on other matters," Dick said in an email. "We reviewed it and decided to update it as we’ve stated in previous statements."

Conservative N. WI paper takes credit for DNR's climate change scrub

The Lakeland Times newspaper says it complained to Wisconsin DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp that the agency's webpages were endorsing the "dramatic...hypothesis" of human-caused climate change, and shortly thereafter, the information was gone.

This is how policy, science and public information dissemination is being handled in Scott Walker's Wisconsin through his intentionally-degraded "chamber of commerce mentality" DNR.

Five months ago, the US EPA posted a fact sheet about climate change and its consequences in Wisconsin, including impacts on rainfall, temperature, agriculture, forest land, fish, wildlife, water, recreation, air quality and health.

I posted the first story about the deletions on December 22nd, but no one until today had offered a detailed explanation for the timing of changes other than an agency spokesman having said the scrubbing was a routine updating.

Here is the newspaper's story, and it also includes information from Stepp that the DNR has severed its partnership with UW scientists who had collaborated on the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts.

After Times' questions, DNR web page catches up to policy Climate-change flap illustrates tension inside natural resources agency

After questioning from The Lakeland Times, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has changed its climate-change web page to reflect a policy of neutrality on its causes and effects, rather than embracing the dramatic manmade hypothesis the web page has touted since the Doyle administration... But how about the rest of the agency's policies and programs, which have real-life economic consequences? There are increasing signs that, when she discovers advocacy inside the organization, Stepp is indeed removing the biases and steering the course away from bureaucratic activism, and it appears to be more significant than mere cosmetic changes on the website. The climate change guide for teachers, for example, has been removed from the agency's teacher pages on its website, and Stepp says the agency's partnership with WICCI has come to an end.

Cathy Stepp touts her record. Not cubicles

Part One of a long and useful Lakeland Times review (registration may be required) of issues at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has much to offer, including:

* The agency is gearing up for a 2017 wolf hunt:

"The hunt is on the books and as soon as there is a decision at the federal level we will be instituting a wolf hunt," said [Deputy DNR Secretary Kurt] Thiede. 

* DNR Secretary and Scott Walker "chamber of commerce mentality" chief implementer Cathy Stepp is something of a change agency, she tells the Lakeland Times:

"It's not like it's the old days in the DNR where these decisions were made in a building in Madison in a cubicle," she said.  

Thus reprising a key piece of her famously blogged and ranted trope which helped explain why Walker picked her for the job - - aversion to DNR staff and where they worked:

...people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.

* And though she supported what was a failed effort through the last budget to remove the oversight functions of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, with all its avenues of public access into DNR activities, Stepp told the Lakeland Times she was the people's champion with a track record to prove it:

I would hope that people have seen enough of my track record over six years and how much work we have put into getting more public involvement - more transparency, more online chats, more surveys, more meaningful involvement and feedback from the public and back to the public," she said. 

This is not the first time she's sung her own praises.

And her self-addressed paean about transparency contradicts her agency's scrubbing from official websites long-established information and links about climate change.

WI Senate heading for 12:01 a.m. vote Walker wanted outlawed

[Updated from Tuesday, 9:49 p.m.] The bill passed, 18-14.

As the Wisconsin State Senate Republican leadership readies an early, 12:01 a.m. Wednesday party-line shoo-in vote on a GOP-crafted bill to exempt political corruption cases from Wisconsin's long-time John Doe investigative process, let's reprise, as I have done often on this blog, Walker's 2010 Lakeland Times interview when he claimed to have lived "transparency" and supported outlawing late-night Legislative voting:

"And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can't vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning," Walker said. "They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight..."

GOP-run JFC 'Coup Amendment' empowers legislators' pension system power

[Updated from Monday, 9:58 p.m.] Based on what they have seen already slipped into the budget process through the dreaded 999 motion - - what I am calling the Coup Amendment, as it was intended to neutralize the Open Records law and make many other foundational state government changes that strongly smell of heavy-handed lobbying - - all to further empower one-party special-interest-obeisant/GOP rule in Wisconsin - - why should state employees and retirees trust this gang of power-mad Republicans to have the public good in mind as they stealthily enhance their authority over the state retirement system without notice or justification by kicking off public, non-legislator oversight committee members?

I defer to the conservative Wisconsin Newspaper, The Lakeland Times, on the big picture here. It's GOP sleaze, cronyism and corruption.

And it's all been done out of the public eye, without hearings, without debate or discussion or warning offered through the last amendment taken up by the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee after weeks of work, talk, delay, more talk and then high-speed 'legislating' to help meet Walker's presidential campaign timetable.'

Let's call it what it is: 

The Coup Amendment. 

It's entire undemocratic content, and not just the Open Records outrage from which Walker has bailed - - though acts officially as it it were law - - should be excised from the budget.

Coup by email attachment or text message or hand-written note slipped to the committee chairs is still a coup, a theft of power that updates and validates Woody Guthrie's robbery-with-a fountain-pen reference, no?

How bad was the open-records, GOP WI power grab blowback?

This very conservative Wisconsin newspaper, The Lakeland Times, wanted Joint Finance co-chairs Darling and Nygren recalled. 

And while the editorial did not lay blame at Walker's door, it did take a broader view of what is going on in Madison:

At the end of the day, the Republican Party of Wisconsin looks corrupt. That’s the perception and maybe it’s the reality. Coupled with crony sleaze over at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, well, there’s something smelling awfully rotten down in Madison.

Read the entire editorial. It's long and severe, paragraph after smokin' paragraph. Plus, the headline is a keeper:

Our View: The Wisconsin Republican Party: Corruption, cronyism, and sleaze

This is the same newspaper that carried a long interview with gubernatorial candidate Walker in 2010 in which Walker uttered his famous and laughable endorsement of "transparency," which I have often cited and quoted: 

Transparency 

When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said.

Scott Walker, Dissembling

As the curtain pulls away from Scott Walkergate's campaign financing secrecy, we again remind readers of his twisted claim to political and executive openness, as told to the Lakeland Times during the 2010 gubernatorial claim: 

Transparency

When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said.

Wrong-Way Walker Again Invalidates Transparency Claim

I have noted the contradiction - - and that's a kind term - - but when I see a story with a headline like this - -

Scott Walker keeps IDs of workers in new TV ad under wraps

- - it's instructive to go back to the record:  

Then-Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker told the Lakeland Times newspaper in a lengthy interview during the gubernatorial campaign published on September 8th, 2010, that his work and behavior as Milwaukee County Executive established and reinforced his belief in open government:

When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said. 

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said.

Transparency - - like dropping the bomb on public employees?

And we've seen Walker's campaign-mode version of transparency [Sic] before:

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's account of communications disclosed in court Monday among Scott Walker, his partisan, gubernatorial campaign team and public officials in County government - - and on his taxpayer-paid staff - - when he was Milwaukee County Executive:

Walker's campaign staff also vetted the county response to the June 24, 2010, death of 15-year-old Jared Kellner, who was killed by a concrete panel that fell from the side of the O'Donnell Park parking garage at the lakefront.

[Then-Walker campaign chief of staff Keith] Gilkes, in an email written the day of the accident, advised Walker's county staff to "make sure there is not a piece of paper anywhere that details any problem at all."

Throwback/Boomerang Thursday For Walker On Transparency

As his plan to keep John Doe records is unraveling, let's not forget Walker's bluster about a commitment to transparency The Lakeland Times printed in an interview transcript during his run for Governor in 2012: 

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said.

As GOP Legislature Pulls All-Nighter, And Walker Hides Out...

Please remember his ironic, iconic bluster given to the friendly folks at The Lakeland Times newspaper during the 2010 gubernatorial election, including these keepers:

Transparency

When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said…

Walker said he does not favor proposed constraints on access to police 911 tapes or to the state's online circuit court records, and he says he also believes the Legislature itself needs to be more transparent.

"In fact I've even proposed - in terms of the budget process, but it would apply to anything - other things that would help transparency," he said. "I don't think there should be any votes in closed caucus, on any issue... If a county board or school board can't discuss a budget in private, then the state Legislature certainly should not. There should not be any closed caucuses on the budget."

What's more, he said, the budget should only entail budgetary items; there shouldn't be any nonfiscal items in it.

" And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can't vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning," Walker said. "They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight…" 

In Walker's World, Transparency Now Is A "Slippery Slope"

In light of Scott Walker's 2010 statement to a Wisconsin newspaper that he'd "lived" transparency - - he'd posted it on his campaign website, but the story and interview have been deleted - -  Milwaukee County Executive, his statement to another newspaper today that taking questions about that office operated is "a slippery slope" could not be more weirdly damning.

As I wrote in January, 2012:

MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2012

Walker Claims Transparency, But His Office Kept Secrets

Then-Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker told the Lakeland Times newspaper in a lengthy interview during the gubernatorial campaign published on September 8th, 2010, that his work and behavior as Milwaukee County Executive established and reinforced his belief in open government:

Transparency

When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said.

The story remains on his campaign website.

But by the time that interview was published, a then-undisclosed email system in the County Courthouse that was regularly used by Walker's inner circle and other Republican operatives had been there for eleven months, records now show.

The system operated outside of the regular communications networks in the Courthouse, and outside of the reach of legal, Open Records search and requests.

And was set up by long-time Walker associate and County Executive staffer Tim Russell, according to the criminal complaint filed against Kelly Rindfleisch.

She had been hired in early 2010 for a taxpayer-paid position in Walker's public service office, but in reality was carrying out fund-raising and political work for then-State Rep. Brett Davis' unsuccessful campaign for Lt. Gov., the complaint says. Davis was a Walker favorite.

Rindfleisch was later promoted to Walker's Deputy Chief of staff - - an even higher-paid public position previously held by Russell - -  from which she allegedly and repetitively used the secret communications system, on public time for illegal political purposes, that was located in her office less than 25 feet from Walker's office, the complaint states.

It all makes laughable Walker's earlier call for ethics reforms to restore trust in government.

Rindfleisch faces four felony counts of misconduct in public office filed by county prosecutors in the continuing John Doe probe into the operation of Walker's office and campaigns, records show.

On page 15 of the complaint (use link above), it is alleged that in addition to work for the Davis campaign, there were more than 1,000 emails sent or received among Rindfleisch and three top Friends of Scott Walker gubernatorial campaign officials - - the campaign manager, deputy and communications director - - between Feb. 2 and July 9, 2010 - -  before then-County Executive Walker told the Lakeland Times he had "lived" transparency in County government.

Russell was charged separately with stealing money from a politically-advantageous veterans' fund that Walker assigned him to run out of the County Executive's Office, despite advice from the County's Ethics Board that the fund's operation be moved away from County Government.

Transparent County operations? More like a Nixonian throwback.

Davis, who did not win a primary for Lt. Gov., was appointed state Medicaid director by now Gov. Walker.

Davis' then-campaign manager, Cullen Werwie, remains as Gov. Walker's press secretary despite even though he shows up in some of the email traffic cited in the Rindfleisch complaint, and has been given immunity in the John Doe probe.

Remember Walker's Famous 'I've Lived It' Transparency Line?

Uttered when he was Milwaukee County Executive and had hired not one but two Deputy Chiefs of Staff - - Tim Russell, later convicted of theft, and Kelly Rindfleisch, later convicted of misconduct for using a secret communications system set up by Russell in Walker's office suite to work on GOP campaigns while Walker was a gubernatorial candidate.

Yet this is what Walker told The Lakeland Times newspaper, and what was posted on my blog more than two years ago:

Transparency 

When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said.

     The story remains on his campaign website.

 But now can't be found. 

Magazine Columnist Missed Walker's Sucker Punch

The "Lexington" columnist David Rennie, writing in The Economist this week, profiled Scott Walker and assessed his presidential bona fides.

Rennie is the magazine's DC bureau chief, has been writing the column since September, 2012, but misreads Wisconsin and American history if he really believes Walker "has a knack for economic populism."

Here is a link to the piece - -  and I will organize my objections around this line from the piece:

After Mr Walker announced plans to curb collective bargaining for state workers, the state capitol was besieged for months by thousands of protesters." 

"Announced plans" omits what really happened - - and why Walker has more of a knack for opaque scheming that democratic, populist practice. 

*  Walker did more than 'announce plans.' He sprung a set of unexpected and unprecedented bills (now state law) and said their revelation was when he "dropped the bomb." (See Walker's remarks in the transcript of Ian Murphy's infamous taped phone call.)

Even The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a paper that endorsed Walker for Governor in 2010 and in the 2012 gubernatorial recall election, said Walker was wrong to have withheld the bomb from voters:

Walker never campaigned on disenfranchising public-employee unions. If he had, he would not have been elected. He got a spare 52% of the vote - hardly a mandate for what he is trying to do.

No wonder PolitiFact rated Walker's claim "False" that he had campaigned on a platform to wipeout collective bargaining.

* Note also Walker disclosed to his largest donor his a "divide-and-conquer" labor strategy.

Does that indicate "A knack for economic populism?" 

Hardly.

*  And the column's description of describing Walker's approach as "plans to curb collective bargaining" also sanitizes the extent of the measures.

Under the news labor laws, only proposed salary raises locked that do not exceed 1% annually remain as the allowable vestige of 50 years of economic and workplace bargaining, with union elections impossibly hamstring by procedural impossibilities embedded into state law,too.

* No wonder PolitiFact rated Walker's claim "Pants on Fire" that Wisconsin's collective bargaining protections were somehow "fully Intact" under his measures.

*  And the measures were extended to local public employees, too - - teachers, snow plow operators, file clerks, nurses, et al - - not just state employees, as The Economist column states.

Walker kept his intentions under wraps throughout a 2010 statewide campaign during which he had the gall to brag about a dedication to transparency (See "Transparency" section in this Lakeland Times interview transcript, here).

Wisconsinites were as upset with Walker's guile as they were with his goals.

It would be a mistake to allow recent Wisconsin history to be recast or forgotten altogether.