For 30 years, former Milwaukee Bucks guard Jon McGlocklin has been promoting the MACC Fund on basketball telecasts. That has helped raise millions for efforts to combat childhood cancer. But McGlocklin has just decided he will start drawing a paycheck from the MACC Fund, meaning these promotions will now help pay his salary. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?
This is one of many questions raised by last week’s announcement from the MACC Fund, which received no media scrutiny. McGlocklin, after all, is “Jonny Mac,” the sharp shooter with the rainbow jumper, the good guy who founded Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer in 1976 and has tirelessly promoted the charity ever since.
But the group already has a full-time executive director, John Cary , who earned just over $131,000 in 2004, according to the organization’s most recent federal tax filing. The group also has a development officer, Colleen O’Neil Moran , who earned about $60,000 that year. Neither staff member is leaving. So what is McGlocklin going to do?
Cary says McGlocklin will serve as president, adding another executive to a group with a very small staff. “What Jon will do for the most part is work on getting major gifts,” says Cary. But isn’t that what the development officer does?
As chairman of the board, McGlocklin was in a rather privileged position when it came to deciding if the group needed to add another executive, and if so, who should be hired. Apparently no candidate search was needed. “This gives us a chance to have someone who is synonymous with the MACC Fund on the staff,” says Cary.
How can the fund afford so many executives? Perhaps because the group regularly raises more money than is needed to bankroll the MACC Fund Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “We’re in a position to raise funds in excess of the needs. They give us a budget, and we meet the budget,” says Cary.
In 2004, the group raised $2.4 million and awarded just under $1.7 million, mostly to the Medical College. In 2003, the group raised $2.3 million and awarded $1.6 million. Most of the surplus cash pays for administration and the cost of fundraising, but the group is so flush that it has a pot of invested money, a fund that grew from $3.3 million in January 2002 to about $6 million by January 2005. The group barely even touches the interest earned by this fund. Cary says the group is growing an endowment to ensure that the MACC Fund continues in perpetuity. But shouldn’t the group disclose that not all donations are going directly for cancer research? Gifts to an endowment are normally raised separately and labeled as such.
The MACC Fund newsletter tells people that its average cost of fundraising and administration is 18%. But its federal tax form suggests that it spent 35% of donations raised that year on fundraising and administration. That is likely to rise with the addition of another executive staffer.
Finally, considering what an insider deal McGlocklin has arranged for himself, shouldn’t the group tell the public what he will earn? One insider told me a salary of about $100,000 has been discussed.
Cary says his group will appoint a compensation committee to determine Jonny Mac’s salary, which will then require approval by the board that McGlocklin has led for 30 years. Will the figure then be disclosed? “If the opportunity presents itself,” Cary answers.
Meanwhile, McGlocklin will continue as color commentator for the Bucks’ telecasts, promoting the MACC fund, which gets a donation for every three-point shot made by the Bucks. Perhaps he should disclose to viewers that a percentage of every dollar raised will go to his paycheck.
Why We Need A State Ethics Bill
Last week, Assembly Republicans decided to kill the ethics bill. The decision was a blow to good government and may come back to haunt party stalwarts like Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Mark Green and Speaker John Gard.
Gard and other Republicans pointed to the recent investigations of legislators like Chuck Chvala and Scott Jensen to prove that Wisconsin has no problem going after corruption. But the entire caucus investigation was largely the result of press attention: An in-depth series by the Wisconsin State Journal so publicized the problems in the Legislature that Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard was pushed to do something about the issue.
In the meantime, the state Ethics Board and state Elections Board, which are supposed to investigate such skullduggery, did nothing during the more than 25 years the corrupt caucus system was in operation. Most reporters who have covered the capital would probably agree that the ethics and elections boards are paper tigers that rarely take action. The problem is that members of both boards are appointed by Democrat or Republican office holders. The result is two agencies split down the middle and paralyzed by partisan division. Both boards also lack prosecutorial power and must enlist the aid of the state Department of Justice or a district attorney to pursue a case.
Bipartisan legislation championed by Sen. Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) would combine the ethics and elections boards into one body, with several appointments made by nonpartisan groups and any party that gets at least 1% of the vote in the prior election appointing one member each. This would end the two-party paralysis of the past. Ellis would also give the new board an independent prosecutor who could go after violators.
The bill passed the state Senate 28-5 last year. Most Assembly Democrats also supported it. So it came down to Gard and the Assembly Republicans, who met privately for hours last week and then decided not to allow a vote on the bill.
In the process, the Republicans may make Gov. Jim Doyle , whom Ellis criticized for belatedly supporting the bill, look like a reformer. Doyle will question why his opponent, Mark Green , didn’t put pressure on Republicans to pass the bill.
Gard may have also hurt himself in the race to succeed Green as 8th District congressman. At a time when approval ratings for President George Bush and the Republican-led Congress are disastrously low, and when state residents have gotten a belly full of criminal cases against corrupt politicians, they are likely to vote against insiders and for a reformer. Gard, who led the opposition to the ethics bill and whose opponents may try to link to the old caucus system, will hardly look like a reformer.
Gard, moreover, was in trouble before killing this bill. A recent survey reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that only 26% of likely voters had a favorable view of Gard, compared with 24% with a negative impression. Only 26% gave him good marks for his work as a legislator, while 35% said his work left a lot to be desired.
Gard’s primary opponent, Rep. Terri McCormick (R-Appleton), has raised little campaign money and is seen as a dark horse at best. But she voted against killing the ethics bill and can portray herself as a reformer, which will hurt Gard. Then there are Gard’s Democratic opponents, including former Brown County Executive Nancy Nusbaum , who is already running ahead of him in a recent poll. This is a district that looks primed to flip to the Democrats.
The ethics bill may not have been perfect, but Gard and the Republicans voted to kill it, not amend it. The decision may prove to be bad politics as well as bad policy.
Short Take
UW-Madison is the 800-pound gorilla that nearly always wins the battle for funding with UWM. Once again, it won a dispute with Milwaukee over which city should get funding for a new School of Public Health. But as a story in the May issue of Milwaukee Magazine points out, Madison’s ally was Milwaukee itself, where UWM and the Medical College of Wisconsin were lukewarm about the proposed school and not all that interested in working together to create such a school.
