Lawyers from both parties are clucking about the indictment filed against a lowly state worker by U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic . Yes, Gov. Jim Doyle has buckled to media pressure, canceling the Adelman travel contract. But after all of the front-page headlines on “Travel Gate” by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , the indictment by Biskupic seems thin and unconvincing.
“I’ve never seen an indictment like this,” said one longtime Madison attorney. “Usually a case like this involves kickbacks or bribery.”
From the standpoint of taxpayers, this still looks like a case of no harm, no foul. Until Doyle’s recent action, Adelman, a Wisconsin company, had won out over Omega World Travel, an out-of state company, because of a state decision to reopen the bidding process. Score one for the Badgers.
This also saved the taxpayers $30,000, say the governor and his aides. To undercut this claim, the Journal Sentinel has used the weasel word “observers,” suggesting that some unnamed folks disagree. Really? Who are these oh-so-knowledgeable observers and what is their proof that $30,000 wasn’t saved?
Then there is the role of Georgia Thompson , the state employee who oversaw the contract award. This is a civil service employee, not a political appointee. Indeed, there is no record of her having contributed to Wisconsin politicians, and she got her job when a Republican, Scott McCallum , was governor. She was hired for the job because she was knowledgeable about travel.
The indictment claims that Thompson used political considerations to “intentionally inflate her scores for Adelman” and told others she did so “as a negotiating tool in favor of Adelman” and to prevent Omega from getting the contract. Thompson did this to cause political advantage for her political supervisors and “to help her job security.”
But perhaps she just thought Adelman would do a better job and liked the fact that the company was local. The darker theory that juries would have to buy is that Doyle aides, knowing Adelman officials were going to donate $20,000 to Doyle, put pressure on a protected civil servant to cook the deal. The carrot they dangled, and it’s rather thin as well, is presumably a $1,000 annual raise that Thompson received around this time. Doyle’s folks had little leverage on Thompson and just $20,000 (of mega millions raised) in campaign money to gain. Is that enough motivation to cheat?
Insiders assume Biskupic is squeezing Thompson to make her name other officials. This puts a middling state employee in the position of having to hire a lawyer to defend herself from a charge that basically involves wanting to keep her job. There is no suggestion that Thompson gained a substantial financial advantage from what she did, which makes the charge against her so unusual.
But perhaps Biskupic has some cards he hasn’t shown. One lawyer knowledgeable about federal investigations said such indictments are typically written in bare-bones fashion, compared to state criminal investigations, and more evidence is likely to emerge.
I don’t buy the accusation that Biskupic’s investigation is partisan. Biskupic is simply very aggressive: He has completely transformed the environment in Wisconsin, whereby corruption of any kind will be examined. But is he overplaying his hand on this case? Only time will tell.
Is The Public Museum Destined to Fail?
The Sunday New York Times did a drive-by analysis of the Milwaukee Public Museum crisis in an article that mostly rehashed old news: the turnover in directors, an ambitious expansion gone bad and the inadequate oversight of finances, with former Chief Financial Officer Terry Gaouette and the board of directors once again finger-pointing, this time in the national media.
Reporter Stephanie Storm did get one nugget, a quote from Sheldon Lubar essentially saying the museum doesn’t have much hope of retiring its debt. Lubar knows something about this. He served on the Public Museum board and then resigned when he agreed to head up the Milwaukee Art Museum drive to retire its $25 million debt. While Lubar was shoring up the art museum, the public museum began sinking.
Lubar noted that the art museum went back to its board members, major donors like himself, and asked them to “protect their investment” by giving more to fix the problem of looming debt. The public museum, he told the NYT , won’t be able to do that because “people don’t want to give money to correct someone else’s mistakes.”
That’s a dour assessment and one Lubar is unlikely to have shared with the local media. But he knows the Milwaukee philanthropic scene, so his comment is worrisome.
Public museum critics have for some time raised the question of how much is being donated by its board members. However it happened, the crisis occurred on the board members’ watch. If they do not give generously to solve the problem, it will be difficult for museum Director Dan Finley to ask others for major gifts. That’s the harsh reality behind Lubar’s comment.
Short Takes
• The Sunday Journal Sentinel offered an orgy of coverage about taxes, all showing how bad things are in Wisconsin. The real estate section joined in with a listing showing what someone would pay in taxes on a $190,000 home in the five-county area. That makes sense for comparing suburbs, perhaps, but not for the City of Milwaukee, because most people in the city don’t own homes worth that much. Just check the week’s “Done Deals” in the same section: 61 of 67 homes and condominiums in the city last week sold for less than $190,000.
The reality is that homes cost less in the city than in surrounding suburbs, and that affects the taxes you pay. City homes are generally older but with more history, on smaller lots but with all of the advantages of urban density. The Journal Sentinel posits a strictly suburban model for measuring value per taxes that undervalues the very city whose name the newspaper carries.
• A story in the paper’s business section last week didn’t just bury the lead but offered the wrong conclusion. The article told us that Wisconsin slipped in the rankings of venture capital raised, money that helps fuel the new economy. The amount raised dropped us to 35th place in 2005, down from 26th place in 2004. This naturally called for a doom-and-gloom quote from John Nies , a venture investment pro who has long pushed for state handouts to help the industry.
But careful readers of the story might have noticed that the amount of venture capital raised in Wisconsin last year actually rose by a hefty 19% – from about $57 million in 2004 to nearly $68 million in 2005. By contrast, total venture capital raised nationally stayed flat as a pancake, rising by less than 1%.
That’s great news for Wisconsin. Why not at least report that part of the story, rather than getting blinded by some attention-seeking survey group peddling its rankings?
• Last week I foolishly speculated as to why the Journal Sentinel Web site contact list ran the business section first. Kind readers noted the obvious — that the listings are alphabetical. As a certain cartoon character would say, Doh!
