For talk radio, Alderman Mike McGee is the gift that keeps on giving. Radio squawkers love stories about (1) corruption in the Big Bad City, (2) bad black officials and (3) liberals countenancing all of the above. McGee is the trifecta, a triple-barreled reason to get angry and self-righteous.
All fine and good for the world of entertainment, but it’s generally not a good idea to make policy based on what gets good radio ratings. In short, there’s no need to rush to judgment on McGee.
Last week, former Waukesha DA Paul Bucher filed formal charges asking that McGee be impeached by the Milwaukee Common Council. Bucher doesn’t even live in the city, but he is the husband of Jessica McBride, who, along with her former talk radio brethren, has been hyperventilating for some time about McGee. And Bucher, whose career in public service tanked after his defeat in the Republican primary for Wisconsin attorney general, is presumably looking for any publicity he can get.
After Bucher’s filing was turned down for lack of standing, Bucher refiled on behalf of ViAnna Jordon, who lost the recall election to McGee. Okay, at least there’s a city resident now making the demand, but why should the Common Council engage in a trial of McGee when he’s already in jail and faces prosecution by both the Milwaukee County DA and the U.S. attorney? Just how many trials should the taxpayers’ money be spent on? Wouldn’t an impeachment trial interfere with and even slow down the real prosecution of McGee?
The anti-McGee crowd seems to have forgotten how a democracy works. For starters, a district’s voters get to elect who they want. I think McGee’s constituents made a bad choice. I think they might have voted differently if talk radio hadn’t turned McGee into a martyr. But they chose him overwhelmingly.
Secondly, a person is innocent until proven guilty. I’m betting McGee will be found guilty of something. But until that happens, how about treating him the same as the Common Council has treated other past aldermen? The council didn’t impeach Jeff Pawlinski and Paul Henningsen (both convicted of crimes in 2003), Rosa Cameron (2002), Richard Spaulding (1986), Mark Ryan (1975) or Albert Krause (1951). Why treat McGee differently just because talk radio needs ratings?
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has even entered the fray, with its editorial board suggesting McGee should resign. Call me corrupt, but if I was facing all of these charges, the last thing I’d do is let go of any scrap of power I had left. McGee isn’t legally required to resign, so why should he behave differently than his colleagues of the past?
My guess is that if you took a poll of McGee’s constituents, they’d fiercely oppose his resignation or impeachment. They already feel he’s been railroaded. To single him out for different treatment than other politicians will just reinforce those feelings.
The glory of democracy is the rule of law. Why the contempt for this bedrock principle? Why the unseemly haste to kick a man when he’s already down for the count?
Yet Another Tax Subsidy for Cabela’s
The Washington County Board proved itself a group of suckers when they handed Cabela’s a $4 million subsidy for locating its outdoor gear store in Richfield. Never mind that the state of Wisconsin had already agreed to $5.75 million in road improvements to get more customers to Cabela’s. Never mind that it was locating its store in the veritable hunting capital of America, a state that leads the nation in number of deer shot and could be counted on to ring up huge sales for Cabela’s. The goofy board felt it had to add $4 million to the company’s profit margin.
Later, as the board’s membership changed, a majority rescinded the subsidy, only to cave in and take back that action because it worried about a suit by Cabela’s.
All very ludicrous, but now the state’s taxpayers are being asked to chip in more. The Washington County Board has applied for a loan from the state Board of Commissioners of Public Lands to help pay the subsidy. This arcane state agency has, since 1848, used money gained from land sold and various fees and fines collected to provide grants to public school libraries and low-interest loans to municipalities and school districts. Sometimes those loans go to municipalities for economic development.
The Richfield Cabela’s store does have a few hundred employees, but most of them are part-timers and earn the usual meager pay of retail workers. They would have had these jobs with or without the subsidy because Cabela’s is sitting on a gold mine at that location. Why should the state’s taxpayers pay the store yet another subsidy in the form of a below-market loan that could have gone to a municipality or school district with a truly public purpose?
The City’s Parking Scam
If you’re like me, you’ve put money in the meters when you park on Saturdays. After all, the sign says it’s two-hour meter parking.
In fact, if you look closely, you can park two hours for free on Saturday: No need to put any coins in the meter. But countless citizens have missed the fine print and paid unnecessarily. We’re all rubes who’ve been snookered by our city’s Department of Public Works.
Now the city is creating new computerized meters that accept credit cards. Alderman Bob Baumann, concerned about citizens misreading the parking signs, asked if the computerized meters would be programmed to tell parkers they need not pay on Saturday. “The response the DPW staffers gave me was, ‘Oh, we make a lot of money that way.’ Well, that’s not fair. That’s exactly the kind of thing that gives government a bad name.”
DPW officials now assure me they have heeded Baumann’s concern and have programmed computerized meters so they will not accept payments on weekends. The exception is the prepay option, whereby a citizen who arrives before or after the 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. period (when parking payment is required) can prepay the fee. You could needlessly pay for Saturdays if you chose the prepay option.
Sounds like a problem that could be solved by reprogramming the computers. Unless the city prefers to keep scamming us.
The Buzz:
-Last week, JS columnist Eugene Kane wrote a column with a breathtakingly silly claim that gangs may be passe’ in Milwaukee. I would refer you to Milwaukee Magazine’s recent story on gangs, in which police estimated that there are “tens of thousands of gang members.” Kane cited a JS series about “crime crews,” which claimed this was a new wrinkle in local crime, but certainly never suggested that gangs had disappeared.
-Milwaukee School Board President Peter Blewett took the unprecedented step of putting himself in charge of two of the board’s six committees. No president in memory has ever been so controlling.
-In letters, you’ll find two stinging and well-written commentaries disagreeing with my column last week on teachers’ benefits. I’ll concede that my use of the word “egregious” was too strong and that MPS does indeed need to compete with what suburban teachers get paid. But I still say there’s a problem there: Milwaukee’s passage of a second pension plan (to supplement the state pension plan) a decade or so ago still seems like a mistake, and one that has driven up the cost of benefits.
And don’t miss critic Ann Christenson’s Dish on Dining.
