The Universtiy of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Center for Environmental Sustainability Education (CESE) is available online, here, with resources to access and bookmark, so check it out.
UW-M's School of Continuing Education, where the CESE is located, is among Milwaukee's under-appreciated assets, especially to out-of-Milwaukee environmental organizations and individuals.
Developers and the City of New Berlin are nailing down the final details for a major project to include a large hotel, convention facility - - and in water-strapped New Berlin - - a water park.
The new complex is in a portion of New Berlin that is outside of the Great Lakes basin, so its operations would rely upon water diverted from Lake Michigan - - if and when the city's diversion approval is obtained from regulators and the City of Milwaukee agrees to sell the water.
Two major points to consider:
Permission for the diversion to that portion of New Berlin requires the adoption of a regional water agreement known as the Great Lakes Compact.
But the Compact is stalled in the State Assembly, and obstructed, ironically, by New Berlin's State Senator, Mary Lazich, (R-), so New Berlin today does not have access to the water it needs to supply the project, and especially its water frolickers, with the water supply it wants.
Secondly: The hotel/convention facility/water park will be a direct competitor with Milwaukee's downtown convention center and nearby hotels.
Does it make economic sense for the City of Milwaukee to assist competitive development in New Berlin by selling it Milwaukee water?
And if the answer is deemed to be "Yes," or "Well, OK," then the next question is: At what price?
At a minimum, the New Berlin application, and especially the use of Lake Michigan water for this particular project, argue in favor of Milwaukee linking such water sales to formulas and prices that return to Milwaukee a portion of the tax-base enhancements in the buying community directly tied to the provision of water.
This is known as tax-base sharing, and its strategic value in the politics of water diversions in the region was favorably assessed by a legal consultant to the Waukesha Water Utility.
That consultant cited earlier business relocations and tax-base losses from Milwaukee to New Berlin's Industrial Park to support tax-base sharing as the way to help win Milwaukee's willingness to sell water to the suburbs.
Tax-base sharing, without regard to water, is already used in Minnesota to help guarantee that cities are not drained of their tax-base resources due to suburban development.
Milwaukee Alderman Michael Murphy has raised objections to the New Berlin diversion application, and Lazich has called tax-base sharing "extortion."
Information and references here and here.
Lazich's histrionics aside, tax-base sharing helps put dollars, substance and equity into regional cooperation.
Some history and a link to the Waukesha consultant's memo, are here.
Add the City of Brookfield to the municipalities interested in obtaining Lake Michigan water through the City of Milwaukee.
With some of the water ticketed for land outside of the Great Lakes basin, in Brookfield's southeastern corner.
Already on that out-of-the-basin list: The City of New Berlin, which has an application pending, and the City of Waukesha, which has consultants studying how to craft a formal application after two back-door applications to Gov. Jim Doyle went nowhere in 2006.
But with the legal structure for such applications stuck in the GOP-controlled State Assembly, all these applications are on hold.
Brookfield says it does need Lake Michigan water now.
Waukesha is pursuing new wells in the Town of Waukesha through land condemnation.
New Berlin says it needs the water now, though it could already have solved its water supply issues by purchasing radium-contamination removal filters that Brookfield has in operation.
There is talk that the State Assembly may approve the Compact following negotiations underway in Madison that would require Gov. Jim Doyle's approval, and also the State Senate's, since the Compact was already approved there with bi-partisan support.
Up to now, GOP leaders in the Assembly have turned a deaf ear to the pleas of New Berlin and Waukesha's Mayors who favor the Compact.
These Assembly Republicans have instead lined up with the Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce, the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Metropolitan Builders Association, who, like State Sen. Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin), would rather throw the entire Compact approval process among the eight Great Lakes states into chaos than approve the Senate bill.
These business and political leaders want negotiations among the states re-opened to weaken diversion procedures, but those negotiations ended after four years in 2005, and the 27 months have been taken up with serious debates in the Great Lakes states, state-by-state, that have produced widespread agreement that the Compact, as written, is sound state and Great Lakes regional policy.
And: The State Senate bill affirms what four of the other states have already approved; adding Brookfield to the growing list of Waukesha County communities that need a workable Compact in place to meet their local water supply needs makes it more likely that, in the end, the Assembly will approve the Compact without major, deal-killing changes.
As I have noted a couple of times since Sunday on this blog - - one posting here - - the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission's agenda for its Thursday executive committee meeting suggests that it may announce a new Executive Director for the agency following a closed committee session.
The committee has that authority: the incumbent, Philip Evenson, told the committee on February 28th that he did not want his contract extended, and he confirmed that to the Journal Sentinel on Friday.
OK. So far, so good.
But there has been no SEWRPC publicly-confirmed search process announced. No candidate selection parameters. No hearings scheduled, no public participation sought, no process disclosed, no tying the agency's mission to candidates' qualifications, expectations, etc.
SEWRPC is a 100% taxpayer-funded agency, with a mission established by state law that authorizes critical planning, land-use, transportation, housing and other important matters for seven counties.
As we speak, it is more than halfway through a water supply study that will influence development, housing, land-use and highway patterns in the region for decades.
Its work, already taking place in an obscure building in Pewaukee, and without any representation from the City of Milwaukee, despites having the largest municipal population in SEWRPC's region, cries out for more, not less public input.
If one SEWRPC committee made up of virtually invisible members can pick an Executive Director without effective public notice and involvement, then "taxation without representation" should be stamped on the agency's logo.
And if SEWRPC wants to behave more like a private consulting firm and less like a public agency, county officials across the region who automatically approve operating fund transfers to SEWRPC at budget-approval time need to think seriously about withdrawing their money or their participation from SEWRPC.
The Chicago Tribune recently catalogued the large expansion in greenhouse gas emissions across the Great Lakes region that will result from the planned increase in oil refining, including the seven-fold spike in capacity at Murphy Oil's Superior facility.
The Great Lakes oil refineries scheduled for large expansions will process heavy Canadian tar sand crude oil extracted with huge expenditures of money, energy and water resources.
The resulting air pollution is at odds with the Great Lakes governors' recent regional commitments to solving global warming with conservation measures and energy alternatives.
And a large expansion at Superior would expose the cleanest of the Great Lakes to pollution just as Superior residents and the region's fish and wildlife are beginning to reap the benefits of a $6.3 million cleanup of earlier polluted runoff from refinery operations.
Some details and history, here.
The uproar over a race-baiting television advertisement paid for by the Mike Gableman for Supreme Court campaign - - not an outside group, by the way - - has led to a formal complaint with the State Judicial Commission (text of story at the bottom).
That's all well and good, but it's after-the-fact, the ad is still on the air, so the swift-boating damage is already done to Butler's campaign.
And shame on the Gableman campaign for crafting, airing and continuing to defend it.
Butler is an African-American; the ad falsely implies that Butler released an African-American defendant back into the community, where the defendant re-offended.
Butler was not a judge during the case. He was the defendant's public defender. But the ad shows Butler and the defendant in unflattering, attack ad-style smear photos side-by-side.
What they have in common is their race, nothing more.
It's a Willie Horton-type ad, and drags Wisconsin into racist mud - - in a campaign for the State Supreme Court, no less.
Those parsing, chuckling about or defending the ad - - Gableman supporter Charlie Sykes did not, calling the ad misleading (Sykes' analysis and the ad are here,) - - are essentially confirming that when an African-American runs for statewide office, that candidate will be openly attacked using race as the club.
Counter-balance that negative, nasty, Jim Crow-George Wallace era attitude with the effort by Barack Obama today to try and move the political process past racial divisiveness towards dialogue and understanding.
Race has no place in the State Supreme Court campaign.
It's there only because Butler is African-American, and the state is overwhelmingly Caucasian, and the Gableman campaign cynically thinks the route to winning a seat on our state's highest court is to appeal to some voters' worst fears.
Gableman may win, but will always be known as the candidate who played the dirtiest of race cards to get there.
Journal Story text about the complaint is below:
TUESDAY, March 18, 2008, 1:01 p.m.
By Stacy Forster
Group files complaint over high court ad
Madison -- A group has filed a complaint with the state's Judicial Commission over a controversial ad from Mike Gableman in this year's state Supreme Court race.
Gableman, a Burnett County circuit judge, started running an ad last week that some say misrepresents the facts in a case handled by Justice Louis Butler when he was a public defender, and Citizen Action of Wisconsin has asked the commission to investigate whether the ad violates the judicial code of ethics.
Gableman's campaign continued to defend the ad.
The code says, "A candidate for a judicial office shall not knowingly or with reckless disregard for the statement's truth or falsity misrepresent the identity, qualifications, present position, or other fact concerning the candidate or an opponent. A candidate for judicial office should not knowingly make representations that, although true, are misleading, or knowingly make statements that are likely to confuse the public with respect to the proper role of judges and lawyers in the American adversary system."
"If Mike Gableman is willing to mislead the public and violate the judicial ethics code merely for political gain, think about what he would do on the bench," Robert Kraig of Wisconsin Citizen Action said in a statement.
The group said the ad misrepresents the facts of the case by implying that Butler was a judge at the time and that Butler's actions resulted in the release of the child molester, Reuben Lee Mitchell.
Gableman campaign adviser Darrin Schmitz downplayed the complaint, saying it was a "stunt from a left-leaning citizen action group" that is filled with meritless claims and falsehoods.
"The ad is factual, the so-called complaint is meritless and is based on falsehoods," Schmitz said. "Citizen Action is simply trying to divert voters' attention away from the clear choice in the race."
The Wisconsin Wildlife Federation makes clear in a statement that it was big business - - including the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, et al - - that blocked final legislative approval to return the state Department of Natural Resources Secretary's position to its historical, non-partisan selection and role.
The WWF noted the reform plan, overwhelmingly popular and approved by the State Senate, was killed at the last minute by the State Assembly through money and influence.
Some additional background here.
It's also important to put the WMC's opposition to a measure of public control of the DNR into context: the WMC opposed a wide range of progressive policy issues in Wisconsin - - clean air, health care and so on.
A summary is here.
One Wisconsin Now (OWN), a statewide media and policy hub has even initiated a WMC Watch website to track and explain WMC's influence.
Pollution in China could pose a threat to athletes sucking in dirty air at this summer's Olympic Games, officials say.
We sympathize: why should a runner, or spectator, put himself or herself at risk at foolishly-scheduled events?
So here's a question: Chicago is the US entry for the 2016 Olympic Games, and that city does not meet allowable smog standards unveiled last week by the US Environmental Protection Agency, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Milwaukee would love to have some Olympic venues right here in our city, and Milwaukee doesn't meet the new standard, either.
According to this video presentation by a Chicago games' representative at a recent meeting of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, some possible Olympic events in Milwaukee are under discussion.
That's sure be cool.
So, sure, it's all a long ways off, and the whole Chicago 2016 bid might get rejected by the International Olympic committee.
But wouldn't just the possibility be another incentive for the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and other dirty air apologists to stifle their whining about government health regulations, and help the region get into compliance?
This is "Sunshine Week," when reporters and editors focus attention on closed government.
Great. So let's throw open the curtains.
Where is the reporting, other than on this blog, here, about the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission's apparently closed, fast-track process to hire a new Executive Director for this crucial public agency?
Yes, public agency.
It was created by, and operates under guidelines established in, state statutes.
The agency's entire budget comes from taxpayer dollars - - federal, state and local property taxes from seven counties: Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine, Kenosha and Walworth.
Scientists say they may never discover why the major run of this year's Chinook salmon in the lower 48 states never happened.
The point is - - what we take for granted in the environment can change suddenly, with profound consequences - - so with these precious natural resources, it's better to be safe than sorry.
In the long debate about whether the Great Lakes Compact should be approved in Wisconsin, there have been any number of off-the-cuff statements claims thrown out by those want easy access to Lake Michigan water for distant communities, like:
We only want a tiny bit of water.
The Lakes will never miss it.
Diversion rules shouldn't apply to us: It's not a diversion if we call it something else.
We're working to see if we can return most of it.
The current, historic lows in the lakes are a blip.
We'd never let happened to the ruined Aral Sea happen to Lake Michigan.
And so on.
My point is failed stewardship on its own, or in concert with other forces, natural or artificial, can suddenly produce unintended or minimized consequences - - especially if you are not eternally vigilant, forward-thinking and rigorously honest and open about your plans and goals.
One day there's the biggest salmon run in the US south of Alaska. Then it's gone.
One day Lake Michigan and Lake Superior are at relatively-average depths, then ships are scraping the bottom in harbors as historic lows are hit.
Don't think that minimizing and spinning is a substitute for science, planning and conservation of a public resource.
And don't take the Great Lakes for granted.
One Wisconsin Now (OWN) took the lead in disclosing the failings of the most-recent State Supreme Court candidates (Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman) financed by the powerful business lobby Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC).
Today, OWN takes disclosure about the WMC to a higher level with the rollout of WMC Watch, a web-based trove of constantly-updated information about who and what the WMC is, how it operates, and where it is headed.
This is definitely an advance in progressives' use of the Internet, making available a site to be bookmarked, checked daily and posted far and wide as a link.
As I have pointed out more than once, the WMC is on the wrong side of many important issues facing Wisconsin right now: air pollution, tax fairness, health care reform, Great Lakes conservation, etc.
Shining sunlight on the WMC should help advance a genuine public agenda in the state.
OWN's release on the website's goals and functions is here.
(My standard personal disclosure, again: I sit on one of two OWN boards, but was not involved in the creation of this website).
Murphy Oil gets high praise for helping with a $6.3 million contamination cleanup near its Superior, WI, refinery (the company's contribution: $200,000, with taxpayers paying the rest).
The good news in that Superior Herald Telegram story: more species are returning to the previously-fouled area.
But the story avoids mentioning that the refinery is on the cusp of a seven-fold increase in refining capacity.
Processing heavy, Canadian tar sand crude, then piping it out in a new distribution system also to be constructed.
Needing, in all, the filling of 400-500 acres of wetlands, which Murphy expects both federal agencies and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to approve when permit applications are made later this year.
Yet these same agencies are working to restore once-fouled waters and land that are part of the same watershed on which the expanded refinery would be built and operated.
"But besides dealing with the contaminated sediments, the EPA and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources want to return the area to its natural state and encourage the animals, critters, bugs and birds to return," says the Telegram story.
Natural state?
Are you kidding?
What will the chances be of obtaining that lofty restoration goal with the expanded refinery requiring the largest wetlands filling in Wisconsin since the passage of the US Clean Water Act of 1972, the beginning of Earth Day in 1970, and other environmental and public health landmarks?
How many ways can you say "contradiction?"
How little value was left in the JP Morgan rescue of investment banking house Bear Stearns?
At $270 million - - a sum not overly less (heck, maybe with inflation, it's equal?) than current Yankee ballplayer Alex Rodriguez's $252 million deal in 2000 with the Texas Rangers - - the deal even includes the failed firm's Madison Ave. headquarters.
A year ago, Bear Stearns stock was at $170 per share. Today, in its fire sale acquisition by JP Morgan, with government backing - - $2 per share.
Anyone giving Pres. George Bush the news? Maybe he'll suggest we all go shopping. If it helps prevent terrorism, maybe we can all prop up the economy with a run to Target.
Just a few days ago, our fearless leader said the economy seemed OK to him, so we're still shoveling $12 billion a week out to Iraq.
Ah, who needs that dough: the Fed can apparently just print more.
Can you say weak dollar, getting weaker? Can you say high oil prices, sure to spike again and again?
Hold onto your hats and your IRA accounts' equity as the markets open Monday.
At this rate, we'll be lucky to get out of this downturn with only a recession - - which is why I predict you won't hear our radio squawkers yammering too much come Monday about creeping (galloping?) socialism and the Nanny State/Federal Reserve's bailout of Bear Stearns and the US banking system, if need be.
Talk show hosts certainly are a luxury, an afternooon bon-bon, a discretionary item for station owners if shrinking, ad-driven budgets need trims.
The microphone jocks could be replaced in a nano-second with cheaper alternatives: interns, community volunteers, even canned music or giveaway programs, like the repugnant, but free-to-stations "The Savage Nation," with Michael Savage.
So I suspect our radio rangers will applaud, or at least diplomatically stifle any ideological complaints about the Federal Reserve's actions, since our local conservative AM talkers are too old and privileged to enjoy selling pencils or apples on the street corner.
(New York Times banking story details here.)
More evidence that glacial melt is increasing.
With consequences ranging from drinking water loss, greater heat absorption on the earth's surface and in the oceans, etc.
No doubt climate change deniers will find something to attack, probably that the worldwide data collection is being distributed by the United Nations.
Or that video of actual humans tending to huge Bunsen burners underneath the glaciers has not been posted on YouTube yet, thus absolving people of any role in the phenomenon.
Much is being made of a new way to bring federal health care funding into the state budget, where the revenue - - health care reimbursements - - could help plug a deficit.
Some are calling the way the money gets claimed a new state tax on hospitals - - endorsed after a change in positions by, of all groups, the knee-jerk, anti-tax Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
Some history, courtesy of Paul Soglin, here.
The way I see it, the WMC is less endorsing a new 'tax' than it is backing a sensible accounting method aimed at getting federal funding to which Wisconsin taxpayers are entitled.
That's a good thing, but let's not get too giddy about the prospects of the WMC getting all progressive on us. They just know a good deal when they saw it: the story is that it took them a while to see past their own ideology.
And note that doctrinaire anti-tax legislators are still balking at the plan because to them, it's a tax - - and a tax is a tax is a tax.
The agenda for Thursday's 3/20 meeting of the Executive Committee of SEWRPC, the southeast regional planning commission, indicates that an appointment of a new agency Executive Director could take place following a closed session.
The agenda is here.
Agenda item #5 says that the Executive Committee will go into closed session "to consider the employment, promotion, compensation or performance of the Executive Director position," before returning to open session.
Then item #6 says "Possible appointment of a successor to the present Executive Director."
This seems to conflict with a search and hiring procedure outlined in the minutes of the previous Executive Committee meeting, on February 28th, which discusses a "broad search," though makes clear the Executive Committee retains all authority in filling the position.
The minutes are here.
Public input into the process, or movement towards not only new leadership, but to a new mission and approach for the Pewaukee-based agency - - on which the City of Milwaukee, with a population exceeding any of the non-Milwaukee Counties making up the SEWRPC region, has absolutely zero representation?
Or any movement towards a change in the way the agency does its basic business - - a management scheme that has excluded minorities and low-income participation for decades, failed to write a housing plan for its seven-county region, and left transit completely out of the $6.5 billion freeway-only transportation program it wrote for the state a few years ago for on-going implementation?
Doesn't seem to be on the agenda; some ideas are here.
Philip Evenson, the current executive director, told the Journal Sentinel last last week that he intended to retire at the end of the year.
So why the rush, and why is SEWRPC - - with 100% of its funding from taxpayer sources - - already lapsing into closed session/opaque mode when transparency would give the agency much-needed credibility?
There's talk of a deal to approve a compromised Great Lakes Compact bill.
Which is curious, as the version approved by the State Senate affirms the Compact as is, while the Assembly version sought such basic changes in diversion procedures that four other Great Lakes states would have to redo their own bills.
Pretty unlikely.
A deal could involve concessions in DNR rules or procedures down the road when diversion implementation, particularly to the City of Waukesha, would come into play.
There could also be Democratic trade-offs in other matters, such as details in the budget repair bill.
Not too clear on what's in it for the Dems and the Governor, since the GOP's obstructionism was so one-sided and blatant.
Time may tell.
Authorities trumpet a crackdown on St. Patrick's Day drunk driving - - which sounds smart, given the documented history of fatal OWI crashes that day - - until you read that the crackdown means "no warnings" to impaired drivers.
Do you mean to tell me that some suspected drunk drivers are merely warned, then allowed to weave back down the road?
For a more enlightened approach, read the related remarks of Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, here.
You get the word "misleads" in an AP newstory lede.
That'll make other media and commentators sit up and take notice.
Let the lawyer/blogger Illusory Tenant tell the story.
