The Journal Sentinel’s attacks on the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District have become so overdone that even the paper’s editorial page has begun to object.
Last week, the newspaper did a front-page, top-of-the-fold story about a preliminary study that questioned whether partially treated sewage caused an increase in emergency room visits by children. The study was so full of holes, however, that it may not have merited any coverage, much less being chosen as the day’s leading headline.
The study looked at six instances where the Sewerage District dumped “blended” sewage and found there was an increase in hospital visits for gastrointestinal illness after two of the six events. That’s it.
Co-author Marc Gorelik of Children’s Hospital admitted that the study could not show any cause-and-effect relationship between the dumping and the hospital admissions and that none of the children had been tested for bacterial or viral cultures. Odds are, Gorelik and company are fishing for funding for a more in-depth study. Fair enough, but why is the newspaper hyping this incomplete research?
The JS story suggested that the dumping might have affected the quality of the city’s tap water. But the study never checked records of the City of Milwaukee’s water department to see if its testing showed any decline in water quality. In fact, city records show no change in water quality after the dumpings. And this is a water department that has been cited in several national stories as being one of the nation’s leaders, with a state-of-the-art system. Even if the JS thinks the sewerage district is suspect, where is the evidence that the water department isn’t handling the problem?
The city’s health department suggested numerous problems with this research, which the JS story largely ignored. For instance, if the release of blended sewage caused more hospital visits, why were only children affected? And why did other spikes in visits for gastrointestinal illness occur at times when no blending occurred?
On Saturday, the JS editorial page slapped its own news staff with the headline “Guilt by correlation?” The editorial told readers: “There are no facts that indicate drinking tap water in Milwaukee is bad for your health.” The editorial concluded that the study’s authors did not “have a clue” what caused the increase in hospital room visits.
What appears to be going on is an ideological battle between Managing Editor George Stanley , who seems to have an unending appetite for attacks on the MMSD, and Editorial Page Editor O. Ricardo Pimentel , whose editorial page pointed out the obvious problem with this story. It’s a peculiar sort of balance at best, given that most people don’t read the editorial page but will surely see the paper’s misleading front-page headline.
Why Talk Radio Lost the Taxpayer Protection Amendment
It was amusing to see talk radio hosts Mark Belling and Charles Sykes complain about the fact that Republican legislators outside southeast Wisconsin voted against the Taxpayer Protection Amendment, the messy proposal to freeze taxes that was defeated last week. So enraptured were they with their own rhetoric that they apparently forgot why a true Republican might have had qualms about the proposal.
Republicans, you see, are supposed to believe in local control rather than in imposing a draconian state solution for local governments. True Republicans might also realize that the Legislature has, over the years, imposed all kinds of unfunded state mandates that force local governments to expend money and affect their ability to freeze spending.
Outstate legislators of either party, moreover, have to worry about the local governments in their district, which are generally a key part of their base; anger them enough and you may get thrown out of office. And any legislator who cares about the democratic process might question a constitutional amendment that was longer than many laws, so long that no citizen could possibly understand or even finish reading it in the voting booth.
The abundant problems with the amendment became clear to most legislators, with the notable exception of some in southeastern Wisconsin, who worry not about logic or civics but about talk radio. They worried all right, but talk radio lost anyway.
The Return of Bambi
The saga of Lawrencia Bembenek never seems to end. Bambi, as she came to be known, was convicted of the 1981 murder of Christine Schultz . The story was sexy enough to get turned into a made-for-TV movie, albeit a very forgettable one, and its endless permutations have generated many news stories. Bembenek has insisted on her innocence for 25 years now, and the case has always seemed mysterious. In particular, you had to wonder about the role of Elfred Schultz, the victim’s ex-husband, who was married to Bembenek at the time of the murder. Elfred Schultz eventually divorced Bembenek and left town.
Now Bembenek’s lawyer, Mary Woehrer, has filed a new motion in federal court arguing that Bembenek was convicted using erroneous ballistics evidence. A more intriguing claim is that evidence of a sexual assault on Christine Schultz on the night of the murder — which might have implicated a male killer instead of Bembenek — wasn’t provided to Bembenek’s defense at her 1982 trial.
The federal court action was filed in February but has so far gone unreported. The motion argues that Bembenek was not just the victim of a miscarriage of justice but that there was “concerted action to prevent her exoneration” over a period of decades, presumably a blast at the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office run by E. Michael McCann , who has always defended the handling of the case.
New ballistics tests ordered in February 2003, the motion states, showed no match between the bullet that killed the victim and the weapon supposedly used by Bembenek — Elfred Schultz’s off-duty service revolver. Despite that, and despite a series of discrepancies found as a result of court-ordered DNA tests Bembenek sought in 2003, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Conen ruled in June 2004 that the evidence was not enough to win an acquittal.
Bembenek’s attorney has taken Conen’s ruling to the state appeals court. But the latest motion was filed as part of a two-year-old federal Civil Rights suit Bembenek filed against prosecutors, Elfred Schultz and others. Woehrer says this new motion includes evidence that was not presented before the state court. The federal case is being handled by Judge Lynn Adelman , who will first decide whether his court has jurisdiction in the case, in a ruling expected this summer.
Some of this new evidence was just beginning to surface when Milwaukee Magazine published its 2003 profile of Ira Robins , the private detective who has made exonerating Bambi a personal crusade. The story was written by Erik Gunn , who has continued to follow the case and provided research assistance for this update.
