“Everybody makes mistakes,” said Kevin Smith, president of the Black Student Union at Milwaukee Area Technical College, who led a group supporting MATC President Darnell Cole.
But one mistake – an arrest for drunken driving – was all it took to get Cole fired. It was not “acceptable conduct for the president of MATC,” declared its board chair Lauren Baker.
So that’s all it takes to get fired now? No chance for Cole to redeem himself? One error and off with his head.
Sorry, I don’t think that’s what happened here. As a Milwaukee Magazine feature story by Erik Gunn reported, there has long been tension between Cole and the powerful MATC teachers union, and between Cole and board members sympathetic to the union.
As the story notes, union leaders accused Cole of trying to “destroy almost everything this union has spent decades building.” Specifically, Cole tried to hold the line on wages and benefits in contract negotiations with the union, and with good reason. As a column I wrote in 2006 reported, the average teacher earned $91,000 a year – about $20,000 more per year than MATC administrators.
The union has over the years been very strategic about recruiting board members who were sympathetic to it. And Cole’s predecessor as president, John Birkholz (1992-2001), was a former union representative who agreed to fat raises for college staff.
Gunn’s story made it clear that board members Baker and Peter Earle tended to oppose Cole. They voted to fire him. One source told me Earle was lobbying board members before the meeting to fire Cole. Earle emphatically denies this. “I challenge anyone to name anyone I lobbied,” he says.
Gunn’s story noted that Bobbie Webber, head of the Milwaukee firefighters’ union, supported Cole, but warned him to be more diplomatic in dealing with the MATC union. “The tone and the tenor doesn’t have to be venomous,” Webber noted. Webber still stuck by Cole and voted against the firing.
That’s not to say that Cole’s relations with the union were the only issue here. As Webber’s comment suggests, Cole’s style may have rubbed some people the wrong way.
Cole was also accused of cronyism in terms of who he hired, and how he hired them, cutting corners in ways that some questioned.
Then there is the issue of race. Three of the four African-Americans on the board (including Webber) voted not to fire Cole. One of them, Fred Royal, Jr. says, “I think MATC is the school of second chances.” Royal announced his vote as “no, vehemently.”
Baker contends there is no other issue at work here. So does that mean any future MATC president who gets caught driving under the influence will be fired? “I can’t tell you that,” she says. “It would depend a lot on the circumstances.”
Baker noted that college presidents arrested for drunken driving in other states had been fired, but then added that some resigned and some were allowed to go into treatment programs. What’s striking here is that Cole wasn’t given these options. The board’s action feels punitive, like members punished Cole because they didn’t like the guy.
Cole’s attorney, Frank Gimbel, is now suing MATC on his client’s behalf. He’s convinced Cole was fired unjustly, and for reasons besides the drunken driving incident. “I think this whole thing was rigged,” Gimbel says.
Interestingly, no one is claiming major problems on Cole’s watch, nor that he mishandled the budget or that the quality of education at MATC suffered. My own sense is he was neither a great nor a terrible administrator, but somewhere in between.
It is the chilly comment of teachers’ union head Mike Rosen about Cole’s firing that lingers. “We’ve seen a lot of presidents come and go, and MATC is a lot more important than any one individual,” Rosen told the press.
In short, Cole was expendable. He was just the president, after all.
The message to those who apply to succeed him is an ominous one. The one administrator who had the guts to stick up to MATC’s aggressive union was thrown out after one mistake. Even if there is more to Cole’s firing than this, union leaders will make sure the next president knows all about the demise of Darnell Cole. Taxpayers be warned: You may soon be footing the bill for some generous increases in faculty compensation.
Archbishop Dolan’s Gold
In my last column, I suggested the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese’s $105 million capital campaign might have some problems. To begin with, I made several errors.
I wrongly reported that a Milwaukee judge had ruled the archdiocese’s insurance company didn’t have to help pay for a $16.6 million settlement to victims of clergy sex abuse. In fact, the insurance company and archdiocese have paid off that settlement. The judge’s ruling affects pending suits by five more claimants who allege they were sexually abused by clergy. Any monetary settlements awarded will now have to be paid by the archdiocese without the help of its insurance company.
I also said Archbishop Timothy Dolan had called auxiliary bishop Richard Sklba his “go-to guy” on sexual abuse cases. In fact, it was former Archbishop Rembert Weakland who said this. And the separate legal entity created by the archdiocese to receive any donations now has seven trustees, having added two more last summer. Three of the seven are Dolan and his two auxiliary bishops, which still sounds not very independent to me.
Some key updates: The archdiocese now tells me just $18 million of the $57.5 million raised to date was cash. Given the economic meltdown, the remaining $39.5 million in pledges could get difficult to collect.
On a cash basis, this leaves the archdiocese with $87 million still to collect for its $105 million capital campaign. You might wonder why the archdiocese even went to the press to report how much progress it had made. Perhaps because Dolan knew he was under consideration for the plum job of archbishop of New York. A timely reminder to the Vatican that Dolan is a good fundraiser (something that has become crucial for besieged American archdioceses) might have seemed the strategic thing to do.
Smart archbishops are savvy at PR. Dolan has already announced he will switch to rooting for the Yankees. And now that he’s leaving, the Milwaukee capital campaign may face even longer odds against hitting a home run.
The Buzz
-Over the years I’ve written about excessive executive compensation and had some readers ask why it matters. I would refer you to Sunday’s story in the New York Times, which found that executives at seven major financial companies collected a combined $464 million in performance pay for running companies that have collapsed or have drastically declined. These companies together lost $740 billion in stock market value. Investors lost billions. Thousands of employees lost jobs.
Why did this happen? A mentality that willingly sacrificed the interests of workers and stockholders so long as top executives won big. “Poorly structured pay packages (for CEOs) encouraged the get-rich-quick mentality and overly risky behavior that helped bring financial markets to their knees,” Amy Borrus, deputy director at the Council of Institutional Investors, told the Times.
–Scott Jensen’s effort to create the MacIver Institute, which I’ve written about before, reportedly continues. The institute would do research, presumably with a conservative slant. One source tells me the institute is offering $120K to some lucky reporter to become research director. The source says Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Bice turned down the job and the group has now approached reporters Mark Pitsch of the Wisconsin State Journal and Ryan Foley of the Associated Press. But Paul Colford, who handles media relations for the AP nationally, says Foley was never contacted and calls the claim “complete nonsense.”
–JS Managing Editor George Stanley has been doing weekly columns singing the praises of his reporting team, most of it quite justified. But Sunday’s column bragged that, “We’re the only news source with staff critics who review and critique Milwaukee’s thriving food, restaurant and fine arts scenes. Would they be thriving otherwise?”
Psst, George. Milwaukee Magazine staffer Ann Christenson has been reviewing restaurants for this publication since 1996. While she certainly wouldn’t claim credit for the city’s “thriving” restaurant scene, I would note she is the dean of Milwaukee dining critics. In addition to her columns and features in print, she has written a weekly online column called Dish on Dining since 2005. A few months ago, JS dining critic Carol Deptolla created a new column. It was called, er, “Dish, a food & dining e-newsletter.”
And a Sports Nut scoop: George Karl really likes the Bucks team.
