I made the phone call with some trepidation. I hadn’t talked to Tom Ament since the pension scandal I reported brought him down in 2002. “What are you up to these days?” I asked, starting off the conversation.
There was a pause.
“Well, I obviously haven’t run for anything,” he said. “I probably never will be able to run again for office.”
That one word, “probably,” stunned me. The former county executive is now 70. He was forced to resign, and seven county supervisors were recalled, in one of the biggest scandals in Milwaukee history. And he’s now concluded he probably can’t return to elective office.
Almost as surprising was the lack of bitterness toward me. He was friendly, gracious, the same old Tom Ament I remembered.
I had always liked Ament. The first time I interviewed him, some 20 years ago, he volunteered the fact that a news story once described him as being “as colorful as a brown paper bag,” and then cracked up at the recollection.
Ament was like that: mild-mannered, self-deprecating, anything but imposing, offering a Milwaukee version of an English gentleman’s reserve. Compared to the towering egos of officials like former County Executive Dave Schulz or former Mayor John Norquist, Ament was a picture of modesty. Whereas Norquist or Schulz could overflow with articulate political theories and paragraphs of policy wonkery, Ament spoke in low-key, careful, mini-sentences. Yet with all that caution, he inevitably said something easy to ridicule.
When he ran for county executive in 1992, I suggested long-term planning wasn’t exactly his forte. As he explained it, “the chances are something may change in five years, up or down.”
When he ran for re-election in 1996, I asked him about the county’s computer system, which was so bad that budget projections were neither timely nor reliable. “Where the problem is,” he told me, “if you add or subtract, it doesn’t make a difference.” You couldn’t make up quotes that good.
In 1992, I called Ament “a methodical, stodgy leader who rarely rocks any boats,” and predicted – wrongly – he’d lose the 1992 race for county executive. In 1996, I went further, declaring “the usual wisdom … is that the challenger must show why change is needed. … In this election, however, that presumption is turned on its head: Things are so broken, it’s the incumbent who must … show why change is not needed…” And my final shot: “The chronic shortsightedness of Ament’s leadership can be seen in everything from the mundane to the profound.”
Yet Ament never struck back. If you slammed Norquist, one of his aides would be sure to follow up with a tough phone call. Take on former Gov. Tommy Thompson and you might get less access. But no matter how many times I criticized Ament, he was always good-humored and available. In 1996, he cheerfully sat for a faintly ridiculous photograph, grinning over his breakfast cruller.
Only once, at a Downtown gathering we both attended, did Ament complain. He couldn’t understand why I was the one person in the media who wrote so negatively about him. “You don’t write about Norquist like that.”
Inevitably, reporters are drawn to politicians who make good copy. Milwaukee Magazine was particularly enthralled with Dave Schulz. Charles Sykes wrote an entire column titled “Why Not the Best?” that suggested Schulz could be the best-qualified candidate for mayor in 1988. When Schulz instead ran for county executive against then-incumbent William O’Donnell, I wrote an admiring piece, telling readers “his energy is irresistible. His intelligence and verbal facility are astonishing.”
Dave was fascinating alright, but proved a lousy politician and administrator. Our March 1990 story by Mary Van de Kamp Nohl, with a cheeky cover portraying “Dave in the Doghouse,” blasted Schulz as someone incapable of listening or delegating authority, a prima donna who was tone deaf to the political impact of his decisions. The one-time media darling didn’t run for re-election. (Schulz, who worked in academia after this, passed away last year.)
Still, Schulz provoked a brief spark of interest in Milwaukee County. Thereafter, the courthouse quickly settled back into excruciating dullness, personified by the drab, nuts-and-bolts leadership of Ament, who rose from board chair to county executive in 1992. The county was so boring, the media seemed to avert its eyes. “We have had days where we didn’t have any press covering the budget – a billion dollar budget!” then-County Supervisor Jim McGuigan complained to the magazine in 2002. He called the county “the invisible level of government.”
Perhaps that invisibility was what made Ament so cooperative with me over the years. He seemed starved for attention. As board chair, Ament had a reputation as someone who put in long hours at the courthouse, and had little outside life, and he was proud of the job he did. He called it “the best legislative body in the state,” yet nobody was paying attention. And so, in my first interview with him in 1988, we had a rambling, relaxed discussion; I had the feeling I could have stayed forever. But the story I wrote, a stinging analysis of the county board as an underperformer, where half of the board members worked part-time for full-time pay, was the last thing Ament expected.
And so it went over the years. Even after I wrote the first story for Milwaukeeworld.com about the infamous 2000 pension plan that would have given Ament a $2 million payout, he agreed to another interview with me for a detailed Milwaukee Magazine feature that would blow the lid on the scandal. He agreed to sit for a photo, perched like a king on a chair in a courthouse hallway. What in the world was he thinking?
As much as he coveted media coverage, he was also protected by the lack of it. He had been able to work his will upon county government with little press scrutiny, and when the blitzkrieg of front-page newspaper stories and 10 p.m. newscasts on the pension scandal hit him, he was defenseless, a sitting duck. A week after the storm hit, I called him on a Saturday afternoon. He sounded shellshocked and lonely, grasping for something, anything, that would make me and the community understand he had been misjudged. At the other end of the phone was a drowning man who didn’t want to let go of the conversation.
“This may sound weird, since I’m the source of all your ills,” I told him, “but the way the media’s been ganging up, I’ve been feeling sorry for you.”
After a pause, Ament replied. “Well, then, quit piling on.”
But I piled on anyway, writing a piece for this magazine suggesting that greed was the cause of Ament’s undoing. Those close to him contested the idea. Even Dave Schulz defended his old rival. “This is a guy for whom it means more to sit in that office than any conceivable amount of money,” Schulz said.
Ament did sign a waiver of his backdrop, and after some delay, also waived the 25 percent hike in his annual pension. But it didn’t stop the drive to recall him from
office, and he was forced to resign. Countless other county workers cashed in big backdrops, but Ament never got a dollar of the lucrative pension sweeteners that forever soured his reputation with the citizenry.
So what are his feelings today, I asked. Any regrets?
“I’m not going to talk about it. There is a lawsuit taking place.”
Milwaukee County has sued Mercer Human Resource Consulting, the company that advised county officials as to the financial impact of the pension plan.
“I expect that I will probably be called as a witness,” Ament added. “I’d like to save my comments for my testimony.”
I told him I’d heard he blamed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,and not me, for his downfall. Was that true?
“Worse than you was the person who hates everyone in Milwaukee, Charlie Sykes.”
Sykes had broadcast relentless attacks on Ament and attended rallies urging citizens to throw the county executive out of office.
“But even with his radio show he reaches less people than the Journal Sentinel. I was told by someone that I’m the only person in the history of Milwaukee whose name appeared in front-page headlines for 28 days straight. Let’s be frank, it wasn’t good PR.”
We talked for nearly an hour. Several times Ament returned to the idea of whether a run for office might be possible. “In many ways, I’d like to. I’ve lost weight. I feel younger than when I left office.”
I said thanks, and goodbye several times, but he kept talking. It was almost like old times, the reporter and the politician, talking government policy, elections and the like. Except, of course, that everything had changed. More than five years had passed, but Ament still didn’t want to let go, still hoped for some kind of absolution, still kept the conversation going.
And so I gently wound the interview down, and we finally said our goodbyes.
“Take care. C’est la vie,” he said. “Try to be a nicer guy.”
Time Capsules
I wouldn’t be afraid to appoint Dave to any job in county government.
– County Executive William F. O’Donnell on Dave Schulz, November 1986. (Schulz served as parks director and then budget director.)
There’s a vast difference in running a complex government and going down a water slide.
– O’Donnell, after Schulz entered the race against him, March 1988.
A small number of County Board members wouldn’t know a public policy if you slapped them in the face with it like a tuna.
– Dave Schulz, March 1988.
Some supervisors put in as little as one day of work a week, yet never have been held accountable, much less criticized, for their laziness.
– Milwaukee Magazine,May 1989.
He hates controversy. He will do anything to avoid it.
– A former supervisor on Tom Ament, May 1989.
Ament has conceded that the board could function as effectively with as few as 19 members.
– Milwaukee Magazine,April 1991. (The reduction from 25 to 19 members was finally passed in 2004.)
Things are probably deteriorating faster than we can get to them.
– Paul Hathaway, planning manager for county parks, November 1993.
There is … almost no money for the maintenance [of the parks] that has been deferred for almost 20 years, leading to widespread decay…
– Milwaukee Magazine,November 2006.
County Treasurer Kevin O’Connor … says the job took 45 minutes a day…
– Milwaukee Magazine,August 1989. (O’Connor, who only ran for office as a protest candidate, resigned after a month.)
[County Treasurer Dorothy] Dean says all three of those positions – county clerk, county treasurer and register of deeds – could be combined into one job.
– Milwaukee Magazine,January 2002. (All of the jobs still exist.)
Tom [Ament] had a small circle of people around him for a long time cooking up deals in isolation.”
– Dave Schulz, January 2002.
Scott Walker has been remarkably uninterested in reforming the pension system.
– Milwaukee Magazine,May 2005.
