Thursday, July 17, 2014

The Very Political Non-Political Mental Health Board

When Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele paid Teapublican Representative Joe Sanfelippo to push a bill removing local control of the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division, they tried to justify this power grab by saying it was to take politics out of the mental health system.

That rationale is about as believable as Scott Walker's claims that his agenda is working.

We already saw that Walker did his protege a favor by making the political appointment of the disgraced Kimberly Walker to the ad hoc mental health board that is supposed to take over things.  Kimberly Walker is the former corporation counsel head that got fired for giving advice to Abele on how to  illegally circumvent open records laws and for giving faulty legal advice to the board.

On Thursday, the "non-political" board voted unanimously to make the politically appointed Kimberly Walker the chair of the board.  Apparently, her skill had trying to cover up things made her to invaluable to pass up, even though she has no experience with disability rights laws.

To add to the non-political politicalizing of the board, they also voted to hire on Kathy Eilers, the political appointee of Abele's who was rejected by the board because she couldn't even articulate a plan for the mental health service outside of closing the hospital, despite there being a dearth of community-based services.

As I had said all along, this is going to be a lose-lose situation.  Not only will our most vulnerable be victimized by the corporate vultures and have their civil rights violated in the name of greed, but the taxpayers are going to have to pay much, much more - both directly and indirectly - due to Abele's greed and malfeasance.

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