Photo courtesy of milwaukeeconnector.com.
The Milwaukee Connector streetcar project is still at risk, says Kris Martinsek, a consultant who worked on the development of the long-delayed rail project. “The opponents are still working against it,” she said Wednesday, December 14th, at a fundraiser for Mayor Tom Barrett held at the Best Place at the Pabst Brewery. She says an aide to Scott Jensen, the former Speaker of the Assembly and presumed Walker administration eminence grise, has been circulating a petition against it. (So has Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan.) “The Republicans vs. transit might win,” she said, adding, “we’re f**ked.”
Barrett’s Fundraiser
Tom Barrett was joined by about 100 supporters at Best Place, including Health Commissioner Bevan Baker, Gary Petersen of the Department of City Development, Environmental Services head Preston Cole. Others on the city payroll – including mayoral Chief of Staff Pat Curley – and those who would like to be employed there, like Curley’s son Dave Curley, now in firefighter training, were on hand for the light appetizers and free beverages.
It was a natural venue for nomination paper gatherers, including Barrett himself and County Executive Chris Abele, whose papers include his photograph. Abele, dressed in a tie-less white shirt, gave an unexpectedly rousing speech in favor of the mayor, saying that his “single best working relationship” is with Barrett. “Nobody works better with anybody than Tom Barrett,” he said. Abele said recent congressional approval ratings of 9 percent are “Darth Vader territory,” while former congressman Barrett said Abele is fun to work with because he “will listen, and has no other agenda,” unlike a certain former County Executive.
Commenting on the gloomy, drizzling mid-December weather, Barrett said he “couldn’t be happier to see rain in December,” since snow removal costs him $150,000 per inch.
Working the crowd were such wannabe judges as Christopher Lipscomb, Hannah Dugan and Assistant District Attorney Mark Sanders, gathering signatures as they went. Sanders carried with him three clipboards, apparently to keep potential signatories from having to queue up.
Mequon Man Wins New Yorker Contest
Stephen Laczniak of Mequon, a law student at Marquette University, was the winner in the October 17th New Yorker magazine cartoon caption contest. “The acoustics were better in the old boardroom” was enough to earn him a signed copy of the original cartoon, which he says he has yet to frame.
What inspired his creativity?
“I was sitting down reading a Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition article that discussed the difficulty celebrities had winning this contest. It mentioned Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Roger Ebert and Zach Galifianakis as those who tried.” [Ebert’s losing streak ran to 107 before he came up with a winner.]
“I figured “well, it can’t be that hard,’” Laczniak says, “and I sat at the computer five or ten minutes, entering the first thing in my head that made me chuckle, and that was that.”
Forced Apology
When City of Milwaukee Assessment Commissioner Mary Reavey was put before the cameras to explain and “apologize” for an error on the city’s tax bills, it was a humbling moment for a civil servant not known for her errors. She should not have been forced into this position since Reavey’s office had nothing to do with the mistake, in which the 2010 tax rate data, provided by the City Treasurer was, in fact, from 2009.
According to Reavey, “I was asked to explain it because everyone thought I could do the best job because of my background and my experience with the press.”
Mayoral spokesperson Jeff Fleming said, “I wasn’t involved in planning this, but my understanding is that Mary knows the details of what happened, how it happened, and what needs to be put in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Obviously, the Treasurer’s office is in a period of transition, the Comptroller is a short-timer, and Information Technology Management had only a partial perspective on the issue. It seems to me that Mary is the ideal person to address the matter.”
That, and because treasurer Whittow and his deputy Hannah had retired by the time the error was discovered, leaving nobody in their office to apologize. But could you imagine police Chief Ed Flynn willingly apologizing for a mistake made by the City Librarian, for example? The apology should have come from the Mayor’s office. Or maybe from the 79-year-old Whittow himself. Just putting him on camera for a few minutes would have satisfied anybody’s curiosity about the origin of the error.
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