In This Issue:
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1. Ministry of Truth
2. Milwaukee Improves
Finances
3. How Low Can You
Go?
4. Post Crescent Editorial
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Ministry of Truth
 In the pre-vote hearing on the Orwellian “Clean Energy Jobs Act,” it was sad to see Wisconsin’s once-respected Public Service Commission spouting misinformation that in better days it might have been branded as consumer fraud.
Today’s commission promotes the contemptible nonsense that people’s electric bills will shrink once the Clean Energy Jobs Act forces utilities to spend billions on inefficient, unreliable, “renewable” energy.
Meanwhile, utilities help feed the beast. Alliant Energy, Madison Gas and Electric, WE Energies, Wisconsin Public Power, and Xcel Energy are members of a coalition sponsoring shifty radio ads promising thousands of new jobs through the Clean Energy Jobs Act. Unmentioned are the 43,000 jobs likely to be destroyed by higher energy prices.
How intimidated are these utilities by the agenda-driven commission? In their mandatory registrations with state lobbying regulators, three of the five say they're concerned about the Clean Energy Jobs Act, even as they tell the public it’s the key to prosperity, in ads paid for by the coalition they were bullied into joining.
Fortunately Assembly Democrats didn't have the votes to pass the bill last night, but have scheduled another vote for Thursday. Guaranteed higher energy costs have fueled hope the bill will die in the state Senate, if it gets there.
Milwaukee County Improves Finances
 Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker offered more proof this week that government can work its way back from fiscal irresponsibility without punishing taxpayers. All it takes is commitment.
Last week, Walker announced a surplus of $8.9 million for the fiscal year that ended December 31. That’s in contrast to the $14.9 million budget deficit projected at the beginning of last year, a swing of almost $24 million.
But things aren’t quite as easy as that might make them sound. The county still faces a structural deficit from the pre-Walker years - a time that was punctuated by reckless spending, including a pension deal that allowed politicians and career bureaucrats to retire as millionaires at the taxpayers’ expense.
Walker stressed that the county needs to end each year in the black because it lacks financial reserves and is required by state law to apply any surplus toward the following year’s budget. Last year’s surplus will help offset revenue requirements for the 2011 budget which faces a funding gap of $47 million.
Of course moving from deficit to surplus demands a willingness to do difficult things. Walker pointed to several “corrective actions” taken last year, including three percent reductions across all departments, two furlough days, and a hiring and wage freeze. Walker said a major contributing factor was health care savings from the new healthcare provider for the county.
Year after year, Walker has managed to avoid increasing the county’s property tax levy and this past winter Walker said his 2011 budget would reduce the levy, encouraging more businesses and homeowners to remain in the county. The larger 2009 surplus will help make that goal more reachable, he said.
How Low Can You Go?
 Seven years ago, a bipartisan group of Wisconsin lawmakers organized the “Civility Caucus,” hoping peer pressure would move their colleagues to treat one another more respectfully. The Civility Caucus actually passed out mirrors to legislators (on their own tab, not the taxpayers’), suggesting they look in the mirror when they thought ill of another member.
If Pedro Colon looked into one of those mirrors, odds are it would break.
In a middle of the night procedural stunt Thursday, Colon and fellow Assembly Democrats swapped a resolution expelling Rep. Jeff Wood for a comparatively meaningless resolution of censure. Wood (I-Chippewa Falls), cozy with majority Democrats, thought the maneuver might help him in his Monday no-contest plea to a Columbia County OWI charge. Wood also faces OWI charges in Marathon and Monroe counties and has been arrested for OWI a total of five times.
A big reason for the quick switcheroo was the absence of Rep. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), the author of the move to expel Wood. And why was Nass absent? To attend his mother’s funeral on Friday.
Strikingly demonstrating why power should never be entrusted to liberal Democrats, Colon announced on the Assembly floor that if Nass wanted to “prosecute” in the matter of Wood’s expulsion, he should be present, since it would be a four a.m. vote and he’d still have seven hours to get to the funeral.
Colon’s move to rescue Wood failed on a 47-47 tie. We can’t improve on Rep. Nass’ comment, that Colon’s remarks lacked “human decency.”
Some whose Capitol memories span a few decades trace the decline of civility to 1994, when Republicans won an Assembly majority for the first time in a quarter-century. Infantile Democrats reacted by beating up furnishings in the Assembly Chamber and goose-stepping up and down the aisles—during floor debate—giving Nazi salutes. Things have not gotten better and maybe it’s time for a “Decency Caucus.”
If they lock out Pedro Colon, it might even work.
Late-night Assembly mess shameful
Appleton Post Crescent Editorial
 It actually started late Thursday night when Rep. Jeff Wood, I-Chippewa Falls, told the Democrats, with whom he typically votes, that he would be attempting to force the Assembly to vote on a resolution to have him expelled. Wood faces three charges of driving under the influence and said he wanted a vote before he goes to court today in one of his cases.
That sent both parties into their caucus meetings for several hours. After they returned, the vote was taken at about 4 a.m.; it was a 47-47 tie, which meant Wood's attempt failed. A two-thirds majority was needed for the vote to pass.
Wood had the right to request the vote at any time. But why did he wait until the last minute on Thursday night?
There's more to the story. One particular representative missed the vote — Rep. Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater, who wrote the resolution to have Wood expelled and has been Wood's harshest critic. Nass' mother had died and Nass was absent because the funeral was later Friday morning.
Despite that — or, more likely, because of that — the Democrats allowed the vote. Said Rep. Pedro Colon, D-Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "If (Nass) wants to prosecute, he can show up."
Nass is a rhetorical bomb-thrower, so we can understand the Democrats' temptation to stick it to him. But human decency — yes, even in the Legislature we expect human decency — should have taken precedence.
Colon has since said he was sorry his "statements were misconstrued." Big deal. Shame on him — and shame on the 47 Democrats who voted to bring up the resolution in his absence, including Rep. Penny Bernard Schaber, D-Appleton, and Rep. Tom Nelson, D-Kaukauna.
The whole episode showed the Legislature at its worst. |
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