The end of another workweek has arrived (for those of us lucky to work your standard 9-5, Monday through Friday, anyway). And with the end of that week comes Polish Fest, particulate matter from Canadian wildfires, and the Milwaukee Leader’s news roundup. This week features an embarrassing display of “bipartisan comity” over a revenue deal that hamstring’s Milwaukee’s independence, a win for unionized workers at a Milwaukee coffee shop, a carceral “solution” for overdose deaths that will only make the problem worse, and Milwaukee’s favorite reactionary dunderhead sheriff mulls a Senate run. Thanks as always for reading the Leader.
“A Lot Of Conservative Wins”: Tentative Deal to Avert Milwaukee Pension Crisis Disregards Priorities and Agency of Milwaukee Citizens
After many months of heated negotiations (in the sense that someone pointing a gun at your head is ‘negotiating’ for your wallet), Governor Tony Evers and State Assembly Republicans have come to a “tentative agreement” to provide desperately needed revenue raising tools to Milwaukee, at the cost of much of our city’s independence. There’s a lot to dislike in the deal, and precious little to like. According to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R–Popcorn Factory), ‘Republicans won the argument’. But holding absolute power in the legislature, and holding Milwaukee’s financial fate in your hands, really means never having to “argue with” – let alone persuade – anyone.
First, the “good news” (keeping in mind that all of this is not yet confirmed and could change when the bill is actually introduced to the State Assembly next week). The deal provides Milwaukee with the ability to institute new sales taxes to fund its increasing pension obligations through a ⅔ vote of the city council and county board. It also provides a 20% boost in state-provided ‘shared revenue’ funding for local governments, though Milwaukee will likely be excluded from that funding “floor” because the primary project of the Republican Party of Wisconsin is screwing over their state’s largest city. This isn’t an act of charity; over the last 10 years Milwaukee County has provided over $400 million dollars in tax revenue to the state and received only about a quarter of it back for the services that serve its citizens. These new sources of revenue may help Milwaukee stave off what would otherwise be devastating service cuts required by state law to fund its existing pension obligations. But they do not constitute a long-term solution to the fiscal cage the state has placed its largest city in.
The bad news is, well, more extensive. Due, among other things, to Republican obsessions with “wokeness” and a longstanding hallucination that Milwaukee spends its money frivolously (read: has priorities different from those of a Newsmax-addicted car dealership owner in Rochester), even this limited new funding comes with humiliating and outrageous strings attached. The new money raised by the authority of Milwaukee’s elected government, from Milwaukee citizens, has already been spoken for by fiat of an undemocratic, gerrymandered state legislature. All new funding must go to either pension obligations or emergency services, with new state-enforced requirements for police hiring. The Republicans were explicit to point out that no new revenue could be spent on expanding The Hop, Milwaukee’s streetcar, an action of sheer pettiness borne out of the seething rage any exurbanite experiences when seeing public transit on one of their occasional forays to Fiserv Forum.
It gets worse! Under this deal the city would be required to drastically reduce (effectively relinquish) civilian oversight and control over its police department. In a city where the majority of police don’t even live in the community they “serve” (another legacy of Republican state government), this will only further entrench the MPD as a force unaccountable to the citizens of our city, one that can act with impunity to flaunt any restrictions on brutal and discriminatory acts by police officers. Milwaukee Public Schools would be required to host police in public schools (reversing another democratic decision undertaken by MPS’ duly elected officials in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020).
If Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s Democratic elected officials had simply acknowledged this bill as the result of undemocratic and spiteful Republican power gained through gerrymandered maps and a reactionary state supreme court, it would’ve been a grim but tolerable response. After all, it is indeed true that Milwaukee is facing a worrying fiscal situation (of the state’s making), and that an increase in shared revenue and a restoration of lawful taxation authority will help Milwaukee pay its bills. And, as a press release from all seven Black members of Milwaukee Common Council directly acknowledges: “there is nothing to celebrate with the overreaching, micromanaging, and frankly racist nature of many of the policies embedded in the ‘groundbreaking’ deal.”
Yet the governor, mayor, and county executive have all lined up to hail this bill as an example of “compromise” and “bipartisanship”, a truly humiliating display when Republicans have been quick to crow about their success in owning the libs. This is less like putting lipstick on a pig than it is putting lipstick on 30 to 50 feral hogs. (Wisconsin Examiner)
State Assembly Attempts To Jail Their Way Out Of Overdose Deaths, Statistics Be Damned
If there’s one thing we all know, it’s that nothing scares an opioid compound like a jail cell. Or, at least, this appears to be the logic of Assembly Republicans who are trying to “solve” Wisconsin’s overdose crisis by putting people in cages for longer periods of time. Under a proposed law, anyone who is found to have been ‘distributing’ fentanyl could be charged with a Class B felony and locked up for up to 60 years, an effective life sentence.
Groups such as the ACLU have already flagged this law as deeply flawed, since as written it could mean locking up friends or family members of addicts for something as mundane as having at some point handled drugs later used by someone who dies of an overdose. It is also a policy that will only worsen Wisconsin’s existing mass incarceration crisis; Milwaukee’s 53206 ZIP code is already the single most incarcerated neighborhood in the United States.
All of this is, of course, in addition to the fact that incarcerating your way out of a substance abuse crisis simply does not work. The United States has some of the most punitive laws on the planet when it comes to torturing people with drug addictions and the results have been more addiction and more prisons. But as usual, the State Assembly majority’s response to literally any problem is to throw cops at it. (Journal Sentinel)
Colectivo Workers Win A Contract
In much happier news, Colectivo Coffee workers made labor history this week when they negotiated the nation’s largest union contract in the retail coffee industry. Represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), this hard-fought victory will deliver better pay and protections to hundreds of workers in Milwaukee. From The Leader’s writeup of the victory:
This contract ratification is the culmination of the efforts of hundreds of workers over the past three years,” said Hillary Laskonis, an original member of the organizing committee, in a news release. “We could not have made it to this point without their bravery, the tireless work of the folks at the IBEW, as well as the vocal support of thousands of customers and members of the community. I am beside myself with gratitude for all of them this week. I look forward to what the future holds for those of us behind the counter and throughout Colectivo Coffee.
There is an old and tired stereotype that says workers in retail environments aren’t interested in organizing, but this triumph by the workers at Colectivo proves that nothing could be further from the truth. Given the opportunity to do so, workers in any workplace can and will take the initiative to fight for their rights and improve their conditions. (Milwaukee Leader)
Local Man Inordinately Fond of Lapel Pins, Lethal Mismanagement, Police Brutality, Cowboy Hats, Mulls Senate Run
David Clarke, local retiree and longtime guest in the ‘Jesus Christ, we need somebody to talk to Laura Ingraham for ten minutes on short notice’ slot on Fox News, has expressed interest in running to unseat incumbent state senator Tammy Baldwin in the 2024 federal elections. Clarke was previously well known for serving as Milwaukee County’s sheriff between 2002-2017, during which time he garnered a national reputation for incompetence that resulted in the deaths of multiple human beings in his jail, as well as achieving prominence for providing an answer to the question “what would it look like if a deranged fascist dressed like a rodeo clown?”.
Clarke is currently polling far ahead of the spread of potential Republican candidates for the Senate Primary (per NBC) now that Representative Mike Gallagher (WI-08) has announced the he will be forgoing a run to focus on his already-exciting career in shameless red-baiting and shilling for the fossil fuel industry. Whoever emerges from the pack to challenge Baldwin will have a tough race to run; Baldwin turned Leah Vukmir into hamburger meat in 2018, winning by over ten points. (Journal Sentinel)
The Wisconsin Nonprofit Hospital Charade
Wisconsin’s “nonprofit” hospitals and health systems have been getting away with one of the greatest cons in history. These hospitals avoid paying billions in federal, state, and local taxes each year under the legal fiction that they are “charities.” Yet as new data from the Wisconsin Hospital Association shows, Wisconsin’s hospitals spend less than 1 percent of their gross patient revenue on charity care. While these health systems collect, in total, over $74.3 billion in revenue each year, recent reports show that they systematically underinvest in the quality of the care they provide and stripping staffing ratios to the bone, driving their patients into medical debt peonage, and even denying care to those with unpaid medical expenses. Nevertheless, cowardly elected officials continue to underwrite this scheme by refusing to call tax-exempt hospitals on their bullshit. In cities like Pittsburgh, where major health systems are being threatened with audits of their charity status, the tide is turning. But here in Wisconsin, all we hear is crickets (Urban Milwaukee).
