Boss Abele Replaces DOA Head After Failed Privatization Efforts

As I noted last week, the 2015 Milwaukee County Budget had been finalized.

Abele wanted to privatize a lot of services and cut out other services altogether. He sent his right hand man and director of the Department of Administration, Don Tyler, to make sure that these maleficent actions took place.

However, county workers and AFSCME members went to the budget hearings and pointed out that folly and maleficence of the Abele's budget and privatization schemes.  The county board agreed.  Some of the budgetary actions taken by the board included:

• Restored $300,000 to homeless shelters. (Keep in mind that this is only November and we have already had two nights with wind chills below zero. Abele's veto was so egregious that even his own personal supervisor, Deanna Alexander, voted against him on this.)
• Restored $300,000 for indigent burials.
• Restored $10 million to do repairs and maintenance to county parks.
• Restored free bus rides for the elderly and disabled.
• Restored several positions in the Sheriff's Office to increase public safety.
• Restored six clerical positions at the House of Correction instead of paying overtime to corrections officers to do that work instead of guarding inmates.
• Stopped the privatization of food services at the zoo.
• Stopped privatization of security guards and transferred them to the Sheriff's Department.  (Remember how well that idea worked out for Scott Walker when he tried it.)
• Stopped the $2,000 pay cuts to county workers and restored a flexible spending account program, which will hopefully slow down the high rate of turnover the county is experiencing.

When Abele's privatization and profiteering schemes had been beaten back, I predicted that he would have another one of his temper tantrums, acting like the spoiled, rich brat that he is.

This week, the predicted temper tantrum did indeed occur and Tyler felt Boss Abele's wrath for failing to get his dirty work done.  Abele threw Tyler under the bus for not being able to execute Abele's poorly thought out schemes.

Boss Abele also didn't waste any time replacing Tyler.  He has already named Teig Whaley-Smith, Economic Development Director as Tyler's successor.

The decision to promote Whaley-Smith does make some sense.  Who better than the Economic Development Director to help ram through secret sweetheart deals for county assets such as our parks and buildings?

Given Boss Abele's propensity for tantrums and rash decisions, I would strongly suggest that Whaley-Smith keep his resume updated.  One never can tell how long one will last when the Emperor has one of his snit fits.

The Boss Abele Temper Tantrum Alert System Has Been Activated

Two years ago, when the Milwaukee County Board overrode some of Boss Abele's budget vetoes - especially those that attacked county workers - Abele through an epic temper tantrum.  He decided to show them by buying off a couple of Teapublican state legislators and did a massive and unprecedented power grab.

When the unions stood up to Abele's plantation economics, he tried to bust the unions - twice.

When State Representative-elect and current Supervisor David Bowen led the move to bring a living wage to Milwaukee County, Abele threw another tantrum and tried to remove all local living wage laws throughout the state.

When Abele started moves to abandon the mentally ill, the County Board demanded that it be done in a safe and responsible manner.  Abele pouted, stamped his feet and went back to his paid off state legislators to have the County Board be stripped off any and all control over the mental health program except to rubber stamp his budget for the profiteers.

Given his past behaviors, Abele must be gearing up for an F-5 temper tantrum after the county board overrode all but two of his nearly 30 vetoes on Wednesday.

Before anyone goes ballistic that the County Board didn't support Abele cutting taxes by two whole dollars, look at the actions taken by the board and see that they were completely appropriate and the right thing to do.  In Wednesday's actions, the County Board:

• Restored $300,000 to homeless shelters. (Keep in mind that this is only November and we have already had two nights with wind chills below zero. Abele's veto was so egregious that even his own personal supervisor, Deanna Alexander, voted against him on this.)
• Restored $300,000 for indigent burials.
• Restored $10 million to do repairs and maintenance to county parks.
• Restored free bus rides for the elderly and disabled.
• Restored several positions in the Sheriff's Office to increase public safety.
• Restored six clerical positions at the House of Correction instead of paying overtime to corrections officers to do that work instead of guarding inmates.
• Stopped the privatization of food services at the zoo.
• Stopped privatization of security guards and transferred them to the Sheriff's Department.  (Remember how well that idea worked out for Scott Walker when he tried it.)
• Stopped the $2,000 pay cuts to county workers and restored a flexible spending account program, which will hopefully slow down the high rate of turnover the county is experiencing.

No "entitlements."  No lavish luxuries.  Just good, old common sense - and necessary - moves to start repairing some of the damage done by Walker and his protege, Abele.

I commend and thank Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic and the other county supervisors for standing up for Milwaukee County and its people and turning back Boss Abele's plantation economics.

Boss Abele Goes MIA Again

Earlier this year, when Boss Abele was supposed to have presented his 2015 recommended budget to the Milwaukee County Board, he ended up being missing in action.  We searched high and low, but know seemed to know where he was.

Abele finally stumbled into the courthouse a week late to present his budget.  Sadly, he had the thing so fouled up that people wished he had stayed missing.

Unfortunately, it appears that Boss Abele has gone MIA yet again.

On Wednesday, the first item on the Finance, Personnel and Audit Committee's agenda was to hear from Boss Abele talk about his budget and the corrections that the County Board had to make for it.

But Abele was a no show, no call.

In fact, his staff has been absent for most of the budget hearings.  Apparently, he doesn't feel the need to be accountable for his decisions or their consequences.

Because we are concerned for his safety - even though the feeling is not mutual - we are again in search of the missing Boss Abele.  To help us in this search, we have again put his picture on milk cartons:

And since Abele is not the type of person who would mingle with the common folk who drink milk, we are also reaching out to his fellow country club members in a manner they can relate to:

In all seriousness, this is an insult to every taxpayer in the county.  The fact that he doesn't feel that answering questions about his budget and providing rationales for his decisions is condescending and is in no way being a representative of the people.

Sadly, he cannot be held accountable for this dereliction of duty for another 15 months when he is up for reelection.  Then he can go missing as long as he likes.  I don't think many people will be looking for him by then.

Budget Hearing Shows Why Milwaukee Should Vote To Restore Democracy

On Monday evening, the Milwaukee County Board held a public hearing on the 2015 recommended

Image courtesy of Sup. Jason Haas

budget.  Despite the fact that the meeting wasn't centrally located or easily accessible, 300 concerned citizens showed up to have their say regarding Boss Abele's budget.

The only issue where there was any disagreement with the speakers was regarding whether the Estabrook dam should be torn down or fixed up.  I don't really understand why this is still an issue since it was resolved in 2011 to repair the dam.  However, Boss Abele didn't feel that the people needed to be listened to and never executed the budget as it was laid out.

The rest of the issues were pretty much unanimous.

No one argued that the county board should uphold Abele's plan to sell county assets for a fraction of their worth.

No one argued that the county board should uphold Abele's plan to repeat Scott Walker's expensive fiasco of privatizing the security guards.

No one argued that the county board should uphold Abele's plan to stick it to the worker's yet again, even though they are already paying more than state workers or city workers.

No one argued that the county board should uphold Abele's plan to cut services and privatize as much as he could.

Based on the number of people in attendance at the hearing and on their comments, it sure doesn't seem that Boss Abele was representing too many people in Milwaukee County.

On the other hand, many people expressed support for the various amendments that have been offered by various county supervisors.  Many of the people thanked the board members for their hard work and for listening to them, the people.  Some even apologized for how bad Abele's budget was and how hard they had to work to find ways to try to salvage something positive out of it.

More than once, it was also brought up that Act 10 and Act 14 had the same purpose for Boss Abele - a means to quash any opposing voices.

Boss Abele's debacle of a budget shows exactly why we even have to reconsider what for of government we should have in Milwaukee County.  Just like his predecessors, Tom Ament and Scott Walker, Boss Abele has repeatedly shown that he isn't interested in representing the wishes of his constituents, but just those of his wealthy friends.

A county administrator, if the people even choose to have one, would be held more accountable and would need to be more responsive to the people, knowing that he or she could just buy their way out of a mess.

Boss Abele's budget is just one more reason why we need to vote to restore democracy to Milwaukee County.

Abele's Budget Gives Cold Shoulder To The Poor

Even though there are a whole slew of elections coming up, for Milwaukee County, the real silly

season is dealing with Boss Abele's budget.  Not only did Abele present his budget a week late, but it is rife with unconscionable and some illegal actions.  I'm not saying this budget is bad, but it is surprising that it wasn't written in crayon when he finally did present it to the county board.

One of the actions that Abele did was slash the funding for homeless shelters in Milwaukee County.  Apparently, Abele forgot about how horrible last winter was with the polar vortexes and dangerously cold temperatures.

To show the importance of this funding, Supervisor Peggy Romo West shared this message from Joe Volk of the Wisconsin Advocacy Project:

"Even though we in Milwaukee suffered through one of worst winters in history last year there were no reports of the homeless freezing to death thanks in part to the extra funding provided by the County Board to support homeless shelters in Milwaukee County. This is something we should all be proud of. This is serious business and should not be used as just another attempt of the administration to mislead the legislative branch of County Government."

Another unbelievable stunt by Boss Abele was the gutting of the Indigent Burial Program, which offers financial assistance to poor families who cannot afford to bury their loved ones.  This program helps hundreds of families each and every year.

Abele shifted some of this money to the Medical Examiner's Office to aid with the disposal of unclaimed bodies, stating an expectation of an increased need for this.

So, in summary, Abele severely slashes the money for homeless shelters, knowing that this could put the lives of the homeless in danger if we have another severe winter.  But it's OK, because he took money that other poor people need to pay for disposing any bodies of the homeless that might die from exposure to the elements.  

All in the name of being "fiscally conservative."  Yeah, just like his good buddy, Scott Walker, claims to be fiscally conservative.  I guess when you're hanging with plutocrats and oligarchs, one might loose all sense of perspective and decency.  After all, they're only poor people, right?

The county board needs to restore these cuts and correct Abele's indefensible attacks on the poor.

Abele's 2015 Budget: A Week Late And Millions Of Dollars Short

The lost has been found! Boss Abele finally got done hiding from the public and made a rare appearance at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.  The occasion was that he was finally presenting his 2015 county budget.  It took about two minutes to make one realize he did not spend that week making sure that the budget was up to snuff.  It took about three minutes to make on wish that Abele and his budget was still missing.

As hard as it is to believe, Abele actually makes Scott Walker look competent and a good leader.

Oh, if you listen to Boss Abele, and can make out what words he's trying to bleat out, you'd think that this budget was the greatest thing since slice bread.  He claims to do everything short of curing cancer with this budget, giving big increases to the Sheriff's Office, to the mental health care system, the parks and everyone else (except for the workers, of course!).

The reality is that Abele's budget is as sketchy as a police artist's drawing.

While I'll be discussing the budget in detail in later articles, let's look at some of the "highlights" of Abele's smoke and mirror budget.

Abele boasts of putting millions of dollars into some projects in the park system.  He fails to point out that these projects are all in fairly affluent areas and nothing in the inner city.  He also fails to mention that he will be raising fees and closing four wading pools.  (In Abele's plantation economics mind, those little kids shouldn't be wasting time and taxpayer money getting relief from hot summer days when they should be working in a sweatshop somewhere.)

Abele brags about putting nearly $4 million into the Sheriff's Office.  Only he's not really doing that.  And again, Abele seems to forget that he is again trying to spin off the jobs of deputy sheriff's to the already overburdened municipal police.

Abele is proud of putting more than $4 million towards the War Memorial Center and Milwaukee Art Museum, but forgets that he is contractually obligated to do that.  He also forgot to mention that he threatened not to pay it.

Abele also crows about putting another $1.5 million for his political appointees on the Mental Health Board.  What he doesn't tell us is that he has no money to take care of the people at the mental health complex who they can't find placements for.  Nor does he have the money for the inevitable charges of unsafe discharge planning.  (He should ask his good friend Scott Walker about how it feels to get confronted by Medicare.)

Abele is also on a privatization kick that makes Walker look like a slacker.  Abele has privatized or wants to privatize the mental health system, the WATTS Review Unit (they do court reports on whether people with mental health issues need to be hospitalized), security officers, IMSD (tech support), the food service at the zoo and various airport services.

Abele also wants to sell off county parks and other assets to his fellow plutocrats for a fraction of their worth.  For example, he wants to sell O'Donnell Park for $14 million.  When all the costs and debt service is paid off, the county will be lucky to net $5 million.  The parking structure alone is worth well over $32 million.

But while he has found money to sell off assets for a song, buy new voting machines for all the municipalities, hand out lucrative contracts to his fellow wealthy elite, he just can't seem to find any money for the workers. Not only are the workers not getting a raise for the seventh straight year, they are taking yet another pay cut.  This time, the hit will be for $2,000, on top of the thousands he is already bilking workers for.  This will mean that many workers could be paying as much as a third of their pay for benefits they were already paying for by taking a salary much lower than the private sector.  Again, that is his plantation economy mindset in action.

The funny thing is that he is saying he can't afford to leave the worker's pay alone, much less give them a raise, because of a supposed deficit of $32 million.  This is from the same guy who was bragging about a $24 million surplus a few months ago, $5 million of which came straight off the backs of the workers he supposedly cares so much about.

The county is already seeing an unprecedented level of turnover in staff.  If Abele gets his way, it will only get worse.  That in turn will mean more money being used for training and less services for people who depend on services from the county.

It should prove to be rather interesting to see how the county board responds to this maleficent budget.  They no longer have much to worry about politcally speaking, since Abele already bought and paid for Act 14, which severely damaged the ability of the board to do its job while consolidating power in Abele's hands.  Also, Abele doesn't have much political clout anymore, as evidence by his going 0 for 4 in the August primaries.

Abele's recommended 2015 budget can be found here.  The county board's budget hearing schedule can be found here.

In Search Of Chris Abele And The Missing County Budget

Traditionally, the proposed Milwaukee County budget is presented to the Milwaukee County Board at their meeting at the end of September.  This year, the budget was supposed to be presented on September 25th, as has been outlined on the county website.

However, this year, for the first time in Milwaukee County history, the county executive, Boss Abele, refused to meet with the County Board on the designated date and failed to present his recommended budget.

We know that the budget was ready, since he was going around bragging about it to everyone and anyone who would listen*.  We also know that Boss Abele would never willfully fail to meet the most important aspect of his job, since he also keeps telling everyone and anyone who would listen* how he is all about accountability, efficiency and best practices.

Obviously, something terrible must have befallen Boss Abele.

Our friends at AFSCME and SEIU sent out the word that Abele was Missing In Action as soon as he failed to be where he was supposed to be on Thursday.

We at Cog Dis, being the good citizens we are, immediately set about trying to find Boss Abele and the missing 2015 budget.

Knowing that Abele likes to tip a few back, we immediately checked the sidewalk in front of the University Club, a place that Abele is known to patronize - a lot.

While we found a lot of other bums, we did not find the one we were looking for.

Then we got a tip he was at the Potowatomi Casino and Hotel.  We had heard he was supposed to be there next week, but wondered if he had shown up early.  Further investigation showed that it was not Abele and his entourage, but a bunch of bed bugs.  We chalked it up as an honest mistake.

Not having any luck finding Boss Abele, we have decided to go with the new tech.  Sadly, we learned that the state's warning system was the silver alert system and not the silver spoon alert system.

Unwilling to give up just because high tech failed us, we went old school and got Boss Abele's face on milk cartons:

Then we realized that Boss Abele isn't the type to mingle with the common folk who drink milk, so we came up with an idea that would get the word out to his associates in groups like the Greater Milwaukee Committee.  We had the missing poster put on bottles of champagne:

But please keep your eyes open for Boss Abele and his missing budget.  We have heard that it is pretty messy and way off balance, so the County Board can't afford all of this lost time that they will need to fix it.

And just in case he might stagger into his office, you can help light a firecracker under his butt by calling him at 414-278-4211 or emailing his office at: countyexec@milwaukeecountywi.gov and tell Boss Abele to get to work!

*The number or people who are willing to listen to Boss Abele has been dropping drastically as he continues to lose credibility and political clout.

Boss Abele Starts Early With Budget Games

Boss Abele is getting an early start in kicking off his budget shenanigans this year.

First he feeds the local corporate media a line of how great his budget is, raising the amount going to the Sheriff's Office (gee, you mean all those cuts which endangered public safety was just a political stunt? Whodathunk that?) and to the mental health system (gotta feed them  capital vultures!).  There was, however, no mention of how he was going to pay for his largess by taking yet even more money from county workers and retirees.  Doubling down on Scott Walker's malfeasance just isn't enough for Boss Abele!

It now appears that Abele's budget is full of Fudged numbers again because now he is trying to avoid presenting the budget publicly:

Abele was supposed to appear before the County Board at its meeting on Thursday to present his $1.3 billion spending plan for next year.

As usual, the invitation to address the board came from County Board Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic. Abele accepted.

But last week his office sent an email saying some "minor changes" were needed to the timeline.

While he "looks forward to speaking to you about his budget" more time was needed "to fully crunch the numbers and double check calculations and assumptions," chief of staff Raisa Koltun wrote.

So the the final recommended budget will be released no later than Oct. 1, she wrote.

In response, Dimitrijevic on Monday called a meeting of the County Board as a committee of the whole for 9:30 a.m. Oct. 1 so that Abele can present his final proposed budget.

Abele's spokesman, Brendan Conway, said initially that his boss was planning to present an overview of his budget on Thursday and didn't know about the date change.

Dimitrijevic wrote to Abele on Monday afternoon issuing a new invitation to appear on Oct. 1 "to preserve the long-standing tradition of the Executive presenting the annual budget for Milwaukee County at a formal meeting of the Board."

"We look forward to receiving your full budget message next week," she wrote.

But Conway said that date doesn't work for Abele. He has a long-standing invitation to speak at the opening of the new Potawatomi Hotel & Casino, he said. So maybe another time can be found, he said.

Once again, we see the arrogance and cowardice of Abele, the boy prince, who is afraid to face the public and even more afraid of his own employees yet treats both with utter disdain.

This game-playing with the budget is unacceptable.  Abele has had months to prepare his proposed budget.  It would not be surprising if this delay is intentional to prevent the county board from having adequate time to find and resolve all of the problems with the budget, whether they were intentional or not.

Abele Begins His 2015 County Budget Doom And Gloom Tour

Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele has started his annual Doom and Gloom Tour in preparation for the 2015 budget.  Abele started his campaign by putting up a lot of nifty graphics and infographics on the county's webpage for the ironically named Office of Performance, Strategy and Budget.  Abele is also sending out his budgeteers to give presentations at various county sites, such as the one I attended on Monday.  If the gentle reader has the 2010 or newer version of Microsoft Office, they can see the power point presentation for themselves.

The objective of these presentations are apparently to try to convince people - especially workers - why austerity is good for us and warn us where he plans to wield his Budgetary Axe of Austerity.  From the emphasis that his team was putting on certain areas, the places he is planning on attacking are county assets, public safety, county retirees and county workers.

Public Assets

Josh Fudge, Abele's top budgeteer, explained that the county owns over 1,000 buildings.  Because it has so many buildings, the county is not able to keep up with the needed repairs and maintenance. The argument is that the county needs to sell it's old, dilapidated buildings and centralize county services.

However, it turns out that most of the 1,000 buildings are things like park pavilions, park bathrooms, sheds and other similar structures that allow workers to be more efficient.

There are some buildings that the county might be better off getting rid of, such as the City Campus, but any liquidation of these assets should be tempered with prudence.  Last year, when Abele's neglect caused a $17 million fire in the courthouse, the importance of having other buildings to utilize was made very clear.  If the majority of county services were centralized in the courthouse complex when the fire happened, the entire county would have been shut down for weeks.

This also raises the question on whether Abele wants to do this to save money or to free up county land for his land developer friends can make a fortune off of county assets, like they are doing at the old county grounds or at the lakefront.

Public Safety

Abele and his budgeteers are also putting a lot of emphasis on the cost of public safety.  The Sheriff's Office and the House of Correction are two of the biggest drains on the tax levy.  Abele has made it no secret that he would love to abdicate the county's responsibility for public safety - especially in the parks - and dump it off on the local municipality police departments.

With crime on the upswing again, it just doesn't make sense to have less law enforcement officers when the current numbers are clearly not able to keep up with the amount of crime that is occurring.  It would also shift the tax burden on the municipalities, especially the City of Milwaukee.  There is no justification that City of Milwaukee taxpayers should have to shoulder higher costs for the people from the suburbs who come to enjoy places like Bradford Beach and McKinley Marina or the many other parks near the lake.

Is it really worth saving a buck or two on one's property taxes when you're putting a higher burden on them through other taxes, not to mention the risk to public and personal safety?

County Retirees

Abele is so worked up about county retirees getting benefits that they had earned over the course of decades, he even made up his own title for it - "Legacy Fringe."  In their power point presentation, they go through great lengths to show that the retirees just cost too much.  They even go to point out that the cost of Milwaukee County retirees are much higher than those in Pima, Arizona!

Never mind that the retirees had worked for decades taking salaries lower than they would have made at comparable jobs in the private sector as a trade off for these benefits.  Never mind that acolytes of austerity like Scott Walker or Abele have willfully failed to plan ahead for these costs.

It's obvious to Abele that the good faith bargaining done by the retirees means nothing compared to the money that could be diverted to plutocrats like himself or his pals at the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

I would expect Abele to try to ignore the promises that the county had made to the retirees - or the law - and attack the retirees to make the pay for the things that they paid for in their decades of service.  And that's on top of the retirees he wants to punish for his own incompetence and failure.

County Workers

As he has done every year he has been in office, Abele is planning to go after the current county worker already making county workers pay more for their benefits than any other governmental body int he country and more than most private sector companies.  Nor do they want to talk about how Abele's cuts to workers' pay contributed $5 million to his $24 million surplus, showing that the cuts weren't even necessary.
again in this budget.  Not only is he trying to put in some daft performance based agenda which no one - not even his own people - can make sense of, but he is also complaining that the benefits current workers are receiving cost too much.  They didn't want to discuss the fact that Abele is

The gentle reader should keep in mind, that just like we're seeing on a statewide basis with Act 10, cutting money out of circulation helps no one.  No one except the already rich plutocrats like Abele and the other members of the millionaire's club known as the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

Summary

It should be noted that Abele's projected deficits are much greater than those of the comptroller's or the county board's.  It appears that this gloom and doom are some more Fudged numbers and should be treated skeptically.

It is also reminiscent of when Walker was county executive and did his own gloom and doom routine, claiming that there was a $15 million deficit, when in reality, there was either no deficit or one so small as to be negligible.

It's kind of funny how Abele can't find ways to afford to keep public safety intact, hold true to contracts and promises or respect the workers, but he has no problem finding the money to pay his cronies lavish amounts of money, move freeway ramps and help out his rich friends get even richer.

Is it any surprise why so many people refer to Abele as Walker Lite?