You could see the sour faces of some out state lawmakers when Gov. Jim Doyle declared the need to create a special package of funding for Milwaukee in last week’s State of the State speech. The legislators’ reaction: fugeddaboutit.
Former governor Tommy Thompson once tapped into that feeling with his infamous “stick it to Milwaukee” comment. Many representatives feel Milwaukee already gets too much funding. They deeply resent any money that goes only there, feeling, not unreasonably, that the state’s largesse should be distributed throughout the 72 counties.
Doyle’s proposal sounded like it had been influenced by Thompson’s former aide, Mark Bugher, who now runs the University Research Park in Madison. Bugher wrote a short piece for the Madison weekly Isthmus arguing that “Doyle should fashion a Marshall Plan for Milwaukee… issues including race, economic development, transportation, crime, higher education and, most important, the performance of the Milwaukee public schools should be on the table.”
“Admittedly, it may be hard to convince rural Republicans to support a Marshall Plan for the state’s largest city,” Bugher added. “But lawmakers should understand: As Milwaukee goes, so goes Wisconsin.” This last line was quoted almost verbatim by Doyle in his speech.
Fine sentiments, but unlikely to be persuasive with legislators. Help for Milwaukee is more likely to come through programs that benefit everyone in the state. A case in point is a proposal announced last week, co-sponsored by state Sen. Spencer Coggs (D-Milwaukee) and Rep. Steve Wieckert (R-Appleton), that provides state loans to landlords for remediation of older homes where lead paint was used.
Wisconsin still ranks high for lead poisoning, with 3.4% of children testing positive for lead, but the figure is 8.2% in Milwaukee. Lead poisoning has devastating results, causing learning disabilities (and worse) in young children as well as aggression and delinquency in teenage boys. At high levels it can lead to kidney disease, blindness, seizures and death. Lead exposure has likely had a significant impact on the performance of school children in Milwaukee, and ultimately, on juvenile crime by unsuccessful students.
Milwaukee has made considerable progress with this problem. Former Mayor John Norquist made this a priority and a city program begun in the 1990s has cut the rate of lead poisoning in half, remediating some 5,000 units. St. Louis cites Milwaukee, and its approach of targeting windows (the biggest cause of exposure to lead dust), as a model.
But in higher-risk neighborhoods on Milwaukee’s north side, about one-fifth of homes still need remediation. Another generation of children could be exposed to lead.
I don’t know if the Coggs/Wieckert bill is the right approach to this problem. Milwaukee already provides grants of $160 per window to owners who want to replace them. The state program should logically work in concert with the city’s.
But this kind of legislation has a far greater chance of passing, offering help throughout the state while simultaneously targeting an important problem in Milwaukee. Incremental, strategic legislation is always easier to pass than a Marshall Plan, no matter how needed it might be.
RIP Spice Boys
Even before Journal Sentinel columnists Cary Spivak and Dan Bice had announced the dissolution of their column, a letter from an anonymous writer was received at Milwaukee Magazine, darkly questioning whether the column died due to a personality dispute between the two or because of disagreements over money. (Spivak reportedly earned more than Bice.)
Certainly, the two are very different personalities. Bice is a sphinx, a quiet son of an academic with a master’s degree in social science. He grew up in a Christian fundamentalist household in West Virginia, got his bachelor’s degree at a heavily Christian college and once described himself as a “recovering fundamentalist.”
The style of the column seemed to come mostly from Spivak, a Chicago-area native who is Jewish and whose father ran a skid-row bar off the Loop. Spivak is a kind of lunch-bucket reporter with a tough-guy cynicism that seemed to activate the column’s often cornball, gum-chewing prose: Every PR person was a “flak,” a political fundraiser was a “bagman,” top party officials were “big shots” or “big wigs,” while other important figures were “heavies” or “wheeler-dealers.” Lobbyists were always courting a political official’s “minions” or trying to get “face time,” and wangling for “deals” where they can “scratch each other’s back.” Marcel Proust, this isn’t.
Was this the style of an introspective guy with a master’s degree like Bice? Seems unlikely. But reporter collaborations are always tricky, and the Spice Boys lasted eight years, which is quite an achievement.
Both are smart reporters, and it was the reporting, the many scoops, and the knowledge of politics and insider deals, that consistently shone. The column’s other strength was the license given it by editors. The Spice Boys were allowed to expose political shenanigans with a bluntness rarely allowed at the JS.
But the column could be unnecessarily nasty. And its underlying theme was that all politicians are knaves and fools. There was nothing to offset this point of view, because the JS hasn’t had a true political column (discussing political issues and candidate philosophies, campaign developments and the like) for nearly a decade. The Spice Boys became by default the only political columnists, with a consistent negativity suggesting that government, and the democratic process, is just a con game.
Spivak has been signed on as an investigative reporter for the paper’s new “I-team,” while Bice intends to continue on alone, doing a column to be called “No Quarter.” That certainly suggests a tough approach, so maybe Bice alone won’t be as different as when he was paired with Spivak.
But challenges could await Bice in the newsroom. He was nearly invisible for eight years, while Spivak played the role of office politician, schmoozing other reporters and smoothing their feelings when a column was about to tromp on their turf. Spivak also cultivated the editors, who needed to sign off on those stinging Spice Boy columns. Bice may be able to do all the reporting and writing for “No Quarter,” but can he do all the in-house lobbying needed to get his stuff into print? We’ll see.
I Came, I Saw, I Vetoed
Last week, the state assembly approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit the governor from using partial vetoes to create new sentences in legislative language. The measure needs the approval by two successive legislatures before it can be sent to the voters for their approval. It was previously passed by last year’s assembly and senate and thus needs only the approval of the current Senate. But that body is now controlled by the Democrats, who might be curtailing the power of a Democratic governor.
In short, it’s a test of their commitment to bipartisan good government, and to cutting back an absurd trick that has been used by both governors Doyle and Thompson to undermine democracy. The people, one hopes, will be watching how their senators vote.
And don’t miss critic Ann Christenson’s Dish on Dining.
