Rarely have I seen an issue more underplayed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel than the budget battle between Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and County Executive Chris Abele (pictured left). This is a fascinating dispute pitting a champion verbal pugilist like Clarke against a political neophyte like Abele, yet Clarke is so far getting the worst of it. An unruffled Abele is simply letting the attacks roll off him citing facts and analysis, while an angry Clarke huffs and puffs away.
The county has had longstanding financial problems; Abele faces a $55 million shortfall and has pledged not to raise property taxes. It would have been difficult to accomplish this without touching the sheriff’s budget, given that it accounts for about one-third of the county tax levy. Abele has proposed a $14 million cut, or 9 percent reduction, in the sheriff’s budget of $152 million.
But Abele went further, specifying where in the sheriff’s budget he thought the cuts should come: mostly by privatizing staff at the county jail but also by downsizing the department’s horse patrol (Clarke and some of his predecessors have just loved riding around on a horse) and eliminating a boot camp for inmates (a particular favorite of Clarke’s). Abele even called for the sheriff to submit annual reports on how he was spending his department’s money.
Abele, however, did this in the most polite way, declaring his “respect and honor” for the sheriff’s office, maintaining the sheriff’s office will continue to play “a vitally important role” and adding that he looked forward to “a reasoned and intelligent discussion on the changes” proposed in the sheriff’s budget.
All of this must have enraged Clarke, and he did what he always does to anyone who dares cross him: he went on the attack. Clarke first sent a letter to the media and his champion conservative talk radio host Charlie Sykes that excoriated Abele. In an obvious reference to some minor dust-ups with law enforcement that Abele had in the past, Clarke declared that “He demonstrated his disdain for law and order even before he became county executive. … I don’t share his goals to be soft on crime, coddle criminal inmates and excuse criminal behavior.”
Clarke later was a guest on Sykes’ show and expanded on his remarks, saying Abele “doesn’t have 34 minutes of law enforcement experience” and Abele was unlikely to observe his boot camp because “I don’t think he could stomach it.”
The TV news stations also picked up Clarke’s press release, and in response, Abele said this to Channel 12 news: “I think the issue is a little too important to get into a war of words. This isn’t a movie. It’s too important for hyperbole or melodrama. Public safety is a No. 1 priority, and it demands a discussion based on facts, research and data. … If you look at the budget that we talked about … we are in no way a less safe community.”
Meanwhile, the facts released by Abele’s office are devastating:
-The Sheriff Department’s budget has risen 61 percent over the last decade, far faster than any other county department. (Indeed the parks budget stayed flat at 0 percent and county transit actually declined by 8 percent.)
-Milwaukee is the state’s only county with no unincorporated area, meaning there are municipal police patrolling every part of the county.
-In 2009, the sheriff reported only 12 crimes to the FBI, compared to 41,375 for the Milwaukee police, 3,288 for West Allis police, 1,908 for Wauwatosa and even 242 for the UW-Milwaukee police. (That’s right, the UWM campus police nabbed 20 times more criminals than the Sheriff’s Department.)
-Just 10 percent of Clarke’s requested property tax levy is for police services. As Abele puts it, “the sheriff plays only a limited role as a traditional law enforcement agency.”
-According to Uniform Crime Reports, Milwaukee County has 30 percent more law enforcement employees than comparable counties.
On Sykes’ show, Clarke implicitly acknowledged the problem of overlap between his department and the police departments of the 19 municipalities in Milwaukee. “What we try to do is not overlap. We try not to duplicate services.”
Clarke contends that “case law is very clear that the sheriff alone decides how to carry out his duties” and that “the state constitution is very clear when it states that no county official can require a sheriff to submit reports.” When I asked for documentation of this, his office sent me a pile of legal opinions which seemed to back him up on both points, as least as to case law. There seems little doubt that Clarke, as an independently elected official, has the power to decide how to spend the money in his budget. Indeed, Abele’s spokesperson Jeff Bentoff conceded this to me via email.
But Abele and the county board do approve the Sheriff’s overall budget and Clarke admitted to Sykes that board members (who have been attacked by Clarke in the past) were unlikely to tamper much with what Abele has proposed. That in itself would be remarkable, for the sheriff’s budget has been sacrosanct for decades, going back long before the time of Clarke.
But Abele has gone further by specifying which programs Clarke should cut and asking for annual reports to prove he is spending in the wisest way. Clarke can certainly choose to ignore the request, but this could open the door for attacks by a future electoral opponent of the sheriff. In his mild-mannered, technocratic way, Chris Abele has proposed to radically reshape how the Sheriff’s Department operates. It’s an astonishingly bold move, and it’s unlikely we have heard the last from David Clarke about it.
A Business Man for Senator?
The announcement last week that Eric Hovde might enter the race for the U.S. Senate presents the possibility that two business people could run for the seat now held by Democrat Herb Kohl (who has announced he will retire in 2012). Bucyrus International CEO Tim Sullivan, who recently sold his company, has also talked about running.
Neither would be your typical business man candidate. Hovde, a Madison native, is quite wealthy, has owned banks and a hedge fund, and is a Republican. But he is a fierce critic of Wall Street. An opinion piece he wrote for the Washington Post back in 2008 blamed the country’s financial meltdown on Wall Street companies “chasing obscene profits” and lax oversight by government regulators. He found it “hard to stomach” the bailout of banks and blamed the mortgage crisis on “toxic” new products created by companies and then packaged into “complex financial products” that many investors didn’t understand.
To judge by his recent remarks to the JS, Hovde hasn’t backed off from those remarks. He told the paper that politicians of both parties simply cater to Wall Street.
Meanwhile, Sullivan has said that if he ran, it wouldn’t be as a Republican but as an independent. (Some observers say he is really a Democrat.) Sullivan told the Business Journal he is still considering running and doesn’t understand why candidates are expected to announce so early.
The answer is simple: Candidates enter early because they have to raise lots of campaign dollars. Sullivan and Hovde, however, are both so wealthy they could personally bankroll their entire campaigns.
Both would have to be rated as dark horses, but if there were ever a time a Republican running against Wall Street could win, this year could be it. Ditto for an independent running against both major parties. 2012 is looking like a very good year for unorthodox candidates.
The Buzz
-Scott Walker has always courted the press and given good quotes. You wouldn’t know that from his current time as governor, where he seems to be forever ducking for cover over controversies affecting his administration. But the old Scott could be seen in a Sunday New York Times story on the chances that New Jersey governor Chris Christie could enter the race for president.
“Do I think Christie should run?” Walker said to the Times. “My heart says without a doubt — with that passion and because of his excitement. My head looks at it, though, and thinks anyone who is in their first term as governor needs to run for re-election first. It’s tough to be ready to be a candidate and to be well versed, particularly in foreign policy, and to have an organization.”
Oddly, the JS ran a syndicated version of the story that left out the Walker quote.
-And as the Brewers doubled down on the Diamondbacks, the Sports Nut was behind the scenes checking on owner Mark Attanasio.
