AFSCME Wins Pay Raises For Milwaukee County Workers

On Monday, I exclusively reported that Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele was refusing to give  a small 1.5% pay raise to Milwaukee County workers despite the fact that he was legally obliged to do so.  The excuse that Abele was making for not following the law was that he was "considering the options."

I encouraged the gentle reader to contact Abele and tell him to follow the law and do his job.  At the same time, AFSCME started an organized push to have workers contact Abele as well to demand their lawful pay raise.

It turned out that what he called "considering the options" was trying to wiggle out of giving the raises by claiming that they somehow violated Act 14 - the law that Abele had written for and passed by Republican legislators and Scott Walker which consolidated an unprecedented amount of power in his hands - and therefore was illegal.  Abele was also arguing semantics, claiming that the wording used didn't mean he had to give the raise.

Corporation Counsel head Paul Bargren issued the following opinion that pretty much destroyed Abele's arguments and then stomped on the dust that was left of them:

Corp Counsel Opinion on Pay Raise

Faced with such overwhelming proof, Abele reluctantly agreed to give out the pay raises and to follow the other ordinances passed by the Milwaukee County Board.

But he couldn't even do this with grace or class.

In response to the overwhelming amount of people calling his office, Abele had his HR director send out an email to county workers asking them to stop calling and that they would be finally getting their pay raises.

Unfortunately, the email included the same misleading language that Abele gave to the local corporate media rag, which was that the raises were for "most nonunion county employees."

A more accurate and appropriate statement would be that the raises were for county workers who were not elected officials or "employees not otherwise covered by a separate labor bargaining agreement" or "employees that are not represented by a certified bargaining unit," such as the sheriff's deputies.

Abele's passive aggressiveness was a vain effort to try to conceal the truth, which is the fact that AFSCME members were working very hard for months to get this small raise.  Abele is also trying to hide the fact that AFSCME represents hundreds and hundreds of members who will be impacted by this raise.

And the reason that Abele is so reluctant to admit that AFSCME still exists much less is still a strong representative for its member is easily summed up by the famous quote by Thomas Donahue:

"The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.”

Abele To Workers: No Due Process For You!

Earlier this year, I exclusively reported about the depths that Chris "Boss" Abele had sunk in his efforts to attack workers.  It had gotten to the point where he used county money and county resources to sue other parts of the county:

Before Act 10, Milwaukee County had three ways of dealing with grievances and disciplinary issues.

If the worker was represented by the union, they could grieve verbal or written reprimands or suspensions of 10 days or less before an arbitrator.  If the discipline was more than 10 days or was termination, their grievance would be heard before the Personnel Review Board (PRB), a panel of five people appointed by the county executive.  Non-represented workers had everything go before the PRB.

With the passage of Act 10, that all changed.  The arbitration system was ended.

But Abele never put another system in its place to deal with these issues, as required by Act 10.

Without going into the details or the merits of the case, a union worker was given a three day suspension that they thought to be unfair.  Without an arbitrator to grieve the matter to, a grievance was filed with the PRB.

Abele was outraged at this and sent his corp counsel to argue that the PRB could not hear the matter.  The PRB found that under Act 10 and other state laws and county ordinances, the worker had the right to be heard and since Abele had not set up a system to do so, they were going to.

Angered that the PRB had found that workers still have rights and that the PRB - his own appointees - were going to enforce those rights, Abele went off the deep end.

Abele has had his corp counsel file a lawsuit against the PRB in order to stop them from following Act 10 and allowing a worker to grieve an unfair discipline.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Abele is having one of his appointees sue five other of his appointees to stop them from enforcing Act 10.  And this will be both prosecuted and defended using tax payer dollars.

All because he doesn't want workers to have even the few rights still allowed to them under Act 10.

The case of Abele vs. Abele was heard in circuit court and the judge ruled with Abele that the Personnel Review Board could only review cases where the punishment is very severe.

What this also means is that Abele is out of compliance with both Act 10 and the Status Quo Ordinance. Both of these laws require that there is a grievance procedure in place so that the workers still have a voice in the workplace.

In other words, Abele is going out of his way and squandering county resources in an effort to silence workers' voices and deny them due process and other rights.

The reason for Abele's stunt is the same reason he bought off state legislators and schmoozed Scott Walker into passing Act 14, the law which hamstrung the county board and consolidated power in Abele's hands.  It is nothing more than a selfish power grab so that he and his plutocratic pals in the Greater Milwaukee Committee can plunder county assets, such as the parks, the buildings and the pension fund.

Unfortunately for Abele, he again underestimated the unions and overestimated his own intelligence.
The unions have alerted county workers to this latest attack from Abele and has vowed to do what unions are meant to do - protect workers from people like Abele and his managers who have been known to repeatedly abuse the power of their office for personal vendettas and agendas.

It is expected that Abele will increase his attacks on the workers when he presents his proposed 2015  Milwaukee County Budget.

There are three important points that need to be made from this latest attack by Abele.

One, no worker can go through this alone.  Most people would not be able to individually handle the legal fees and other costs stemming from Abele's malfeasance.  Furthermore, the impact of the victories over Abele's malfeasance is stronger when it is shared among all workers.

Secondly, the Milwaukee County Board needs to step up once again and do what Boss Abele won't, which is protect the county, the workers and the taxpayers by putting in an effective and efficient grievance procedure, which is required by law and which will be much less expensive than the long line of court cases and WERC complaints that Abele is advocating for.

Thirdly, one has to question the leadership of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County.  Even though Abele has repeatedly attacked workers' rights, living wage laws, their own party members and have repeatedly donated to the most rabid of Teapublicans, Democratic leaders continue to say and do nothing.

When Walker would do the same things, they were denouncing it at every turn.  But now that it's Abele doing it, there is nothing from the Democrats.

This would mean that they are either OK with Abele's drastic shift from their platform, they are too scared to say anything or that Abele has bought off their silence.  No matter how one cuts it, it makes me question their judgment and other decisions that they have made.

I got news for them, but it's wrong no matter who does it.  Supporting workers' rights, providing quality services for those who need it, and responsible governing is not a sometimes thing.

Pro-Plutocrat Referendum Group Broke Election Laws

It was pretty obvious from the beginning that Chris Abele, the Mitt Romney of Milwaukee County, wanted to make  his usurpation of power a sure thing.  (Just because the boy prince did not like being told no for the first time in his spoiled life.)

He and his plutocratic pals at the misnamed Greater Milwaukee Committee retained the silk stocking law firm of Foley and Lardner to write the bill that would eventually become Act 14.

He and his pals paid off people like Teapublicans Joe Sanfelippo and Dale Kooyenga to get the bill passed.

Part of the bill was a red herring referendum that they scheduled for the spring election, knowing that the voter turnout would be extremely low and extremely conservative.

Then in the weeks leading up to the voting day, he and his friends at GMC - people like Michael Grebe, Walker's campaign chair and head of the Bradley Foundation - started a PAC front group they called "Forward Milwaukee County."  Said group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on radio commercials.  They sent out propaganda email blasts almost daily.

They even got the Republicans to do robocalling for them.

But even that wasn't enough for Abele and company to feel assured of victory.  They also had to break the law.

In their zealousness to get their email blasts out to as many people as possible, they did an open records request of the email databases for the county supervisors. Apparently, they didn't bother to check the databases before using them and sent their blasts to people on their county emails:

Click to embiggen

And it wasn't just them, but also elected officials, like the county board supervisors themselves:

Click to embiggen

Needless to say, it's against the law to send these emails, which blatantly tell the recipient to vote yes on the referendum, via the government emails.  It is also illegal to solicit elected officials in their offices or using their official email.  Thirdly, given that Abele was involved to some extent in this whole debacle, there would be problems with soliciting employees at their workplace.

All in all, some people are in serious trouble.  Abele might be able to worm his way out of it, but Rice is definitely on the hook.

And this is far from the first time that Abele played fast and loose with the law.

Joe Rice, the treasurer for this group, is a former county supervisor and should know the rules.  But apparently he and Abele just don't care. It's more than a bit reminiscent of their mutual friend, Scott Walker, and his staff, who didn't care about the rules even though they knew better.

It's a good think that Abele and Walker are such tight friends.  At the pace they are going, they will be sharing the same prison cell.

Vote No To Abele's April Fool Referendum!

In just over two weeks, Milwaukee County residents will have the "opportunity" to vote on a referendum regarding whether the salaries of the Milwaukee County Board should be slashed by more than half, down to the poverty level.

Said referendum was a red herring for Act 14, the power grab by Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele.   Abele is a plutocrat who bought his way to being county executive.with the agenda of making Milwaukee County into a playground for him and his fellow plutocrat and wealthy elite in the Greater Milwaukee Committee (GMC).

But his plans hit a wall during the crafting of the 2013 county budget when the County Board stood up for the people and told him no.  Abele and his fellow plutocrats at the GMC had a massive temper tantrum and bought off a couple of Teapublican state legislators, Joe Sanfelippo and Dale Kooyenga, to ramrod through a bill which took away the checks and balances in county government by hamstringing the board and concentrating power in Abele's hands.

Abele and his minions tried to pass of the bill as giving a voice to the people, but if anyone believes that, well, the joke is on them.

The brunt of the damage has already been done when the board's staff had been slashed.  Hey, who needs staff to research things and make sure that they are fiscally responsible or even legal?

But according to an article by Steve Schultze of the corporate media giant, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, even the vote on the supervisors' salaries is an empty gesture due to the other parts of Act 14:

Board Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic called the referendum a sham, because the budget cuts previously ordered by the state law will effectively force the supervisor pay cuts.

The state law forced the board to reduce its budget for this year by $2.5 million, to $4.1 million. The law orders further cuts to the board's budget in 2016.

The referendum question also says supervisors would get no benefits beyond the part-time pay, which means they would lose health insurance, credit toward a county pension and other perks. That part of the referendum is also a sham because last year's Act 14 explicitly prohibited any such benefits to supervisors after the spring 2016 election, Dimitrijevic said.

"It is a sham and it's really continuing to do what it was always designed to do, which is consolidating power into the hands of the county executive," she said.

Dimitrijevic said she would take an active role in making that case but did not say whether she would work to persuade voters to vote no on the question.

Supervisor John Weishan Jr. said the intent of the referendum was to undercut Milwaukee by weakening representation on the County Board. When supervisors are paid a part-time salary, they won't be able to devote as much time and energy to the job, he said.

He called the referendum question "very convoluted and disingenuous. It's meant to be confusing because they don't want people to truly understand the effects of this," Weishan said.

We already have had a glimpse of what life will be like in Milwaukee County with power concentrated in Abele's hands and with a diminished board which will not be able to as effectively counter his malfeasance. Some of the things that have happened since Act 14 went into effect include, but in no way limited to:

• The 2014 county budget being more than $3.5 million out of balance.  Furthermore, the budget that Abele proposed would have severely endangered public safety, privatized more services without accountability or cost savings and rewarded his inner circle with salaries up to $170,000 while slashing thousands from the take home pay of front line workers, exceeding even Scott Walker's system of cronyism and attacks on workers..
• The abandonment of Milwaukee's mentally ill without even the most basic safety nets in place which the board had installed.
• The burning of the Milwaukee County Courthouse which was caused by Abele's willful neglect and refusal to make repairs.  To add to it, taxpayers will be on the hook for millions of dollars for the cost of the clean up and repairs, a fact only made known by the diligence of the board.
• Abele has actively fought every effort to allow workers in Milwaukee County to earn a living wage.  Abele's malevolence to this cause has gone so far as to endanger all workers in the state who benefit from living wage laws.
• Abele has fought to rewrite geographic history in order to allow a crony to build a 44 story Big lighter on the lakefront.  Similarly, he has also found money to help reroute whole freeway ramps.  But yet he can't find the money to repair county buildings, pay staff or provide sufficient services.
• Abele tried to bust the unions in the county.  Again, it was the board that stopped Abele from making Milwaukee a right to work county.
• Abele opposed restoring the Veterans War Memorial Center, calling a deal to fix up the building to be "bullshit."  Abele went on to say that the War Memorial Center shouldn't be on the lake front but dumped on the VA grounds, even though he doesn't have the authority to dictate what happens on federal owned property.
• Abele tried to rig the bidding process so that the contract for the transit system would go to an out of state, for profit company with a shady record and was actually up for sale itself.  When his bid rigging was exposed, Abele tried to extort the board into illegal activities to allow his bid rigging to go on.

Needless to say, it's not the County Board that's the problem.  Without them, the county would have been in even more dire straits than it is now.  

The article reported that Abele is still trying to claim that his power grab was neither personal or political.  I'm not sure, but I think Abele is the only one that still believes this.  But as I noted above, Abele hasn't been told no nearly enough in his life and so surrounds himself with yes men who wouldn't dare point out reality to him.

Finally, I would note that the reporter is calling the referendum all but a done deal and says that no group has come out in opposition to the power grab.  

That is an utterly false statement.

Both AFSCME and the Milwaukee Labor Council have come out in opposition to the referendum.  I believe that several other unions and grassroots groups have as well.  

But what can one expect.  The corporate media will protect its own, even if it means lying to the readers.

Regardless of the outcome of the referendum, which does look bleak due to the way the game has been rigged, one thing for sure.

April 1st - April's Fools Day - is the perfect day for Abele's phony referendum.  Maybe the board can pass a resolution declaring the day to be Emperor Abele Day.  At least the meaning of that day would be the same.

Urban Myth Redux

On November 1st, Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee posted a piece lamenting the diminishing of local control by the state legislature.

I responded a few days later pointing out that Murphy excluded Act 14, one of the bigger examples of this loss of local control, one that he advocated for.  I had also commented on his blog to the same effect.

In his post, Murphy responded that the Wisconsin Counties Association (WCA) didn't respond take a view of Act 14, which is one of the reasons he did not include it in his post.

Murphy then wrote a second post, iterating the points he made in his comment:

In reaction to my column about the decline of local control, I got complaints from both Mike Plaisted and Chris Liebenthal, from the Cognitive Dissidence blog, arguing I should have included Act 14 as an example of usurping local control.

But the examples cited in my story, including measures ending residency in Milwaukee or changing how the city assesses billboards, were uniformly opposed by city officials. The proposal to downsize the county board split Milwaukee, with supervisors and some Milwaukee legislators opposing it, and the county executive, some legislators and Greater Milwaukee Committee supporting it. For that matter, huge majorities in many suburbs supported the idea in local referendums.

Because county officials were split on the issue, the Wisconsin Counties Association took no stand on Act 14, whereas it typically opposes legislative changes that interfere with county power.

But Murphy is dead wrong with that statement.

The WCA did indeed come out on AB85, the bill which eventually became Act 14. And they were against it.

I again pointed this out in the comments of Murphy's post.  He promptly responded, stating that his information came from Jon Hochkammer, the WCA’s legislative director.

Now, someone is mistaken here.  Either Hochkammer misspoke or incorrectly remembered what happened or Murphy misunderstood what Hochkammer was saying or misrepresented it.

But either way, the fact is that the WCA did come out against it, and for good cause, since it is still one of the most egregious assaults on representative government and our democracy, made even the worse for the underhanded way it was done.

The Tears Of A Clown

Last week, the Finance, Personnel and Audit Committee of the Milwaukee County Board, in the course of their duties in trying to bring some sense of sanity to Chris Abele's unbalanced and illegal budget, had to trim the overly generous salaries of some of Abele's department heads.

To hear Abele tell it, one would think they killed his favorite kitten.  He first went mewling to Bruce Murphy of the blog Urban Milwaukee, knowing he would get a sympathetic ear, but only barely:

Abele is outraged. This is going to “a massively detrimental impact,” he fumed to the newspaper. He also called me to complain: “To make these radical changes without consulting anyone in these departments is not the way to run a government,” he said.

The 8-0 vote strongly suggests the full board will pass this by a veto-proof majority. The cuts will at the very least dismay staff and in the long term might make it harder for Milwaukee County to recruit and retain administrative staff. But I doubt whether voters will care. Politically speaking, once you make the argument that taxpayers are paying too much for the county board, you open the door for a similar argument about executive staff.

What's would be funny about this if it weren't true is that Abele already never consults with people in the county, but rather passes on orders from the Greater Milwaukee Committee or their subsidiary, the Public Policy Forum.

Murphy also brings up the specter of Kimberly Walker, the former head of Corp Counsel. He cites her of an example of how "mean" the County Board can be because they fired her. He forgets to mention she was failing at her duties, giving bad advice and was actually encouraging the commission of a crime by advising Abele on how to avoid open records requests. He also fails to mention that Bill Domina, the head of Corp Counsel under Scott Walker's term as county executive, did just fine in that job. The only thing that changed is the administrative side of the equation. Gee, could it really be that Abele who is the problem? Who'da thunk that?

Not getting enough traction from Murphy's column, Abele then went weeping to Steve Schultze at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  Schultze didn't pull any punches and actually reported the comparison of the salaries of Abele's cronies to the salaries of Scott Walker's cronies at the state level.  The findings make it even harder to feel sympathetic towards Abele:

Cullen used salary comparisons between pay of three of the county administrators facing cuts with state officials holding similar job titles to justify the reductions. For example, Tyler's $142,100 pay exceeds state Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch's by more than $15,000, yet Huebsch oversees more than seven times as many employees and presides over a budget that dwarfs Tyler's.

State Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb earns about $2,000 less than county Transportation Director Brian Dranzik, but commands a budget 17 times greater than Dranzik's.

And State Health and Human Services Secretary Kitty Rhoades is paid about $5,000 more than county Health and Human Services Director Hector Colon, but oversees a budget 30 times greater than Colon's.

That shows the county employees are overpaid, said Cullen.

It should also be noted that Supervisor Cullen also noted that the front line county workers have also taken draconian cuts int he past three years, with some workers having more than 20% of their take home pay cut because of Abele's austerity.

But to give Abele a fair shake, let's look at a couple of things.

Abele boasts that they are "turning the county around" and "We're doing more, better, for less."

So far Abele's claims to fame is a downsizing at the airport, the privatization of mental health services (which already as reduced public safety and left at least one person permanently injured), bogging down the transit system in a number of lawsuits stemming from his sketchy backroom dealings and setting the courthouse on fire.

Yet taxes have not gone down one penny.  So what he is doing more or better for less can only be found in his own delusional thoughts.

The other thing to consider his Abele's own record regarding his staff.  In the couple years that Abele has been at the helm, he has fired a number of people, including:

• Cindy van Pelt - Director of Risk Management
• Jim Burton - Director of Facilities Management
• Sue Black - Director of Parks
• Frank Busalacchi - Director of Transportation and Public Works
• Paula Lucey - Director of Mental Health Services
• Patrick Farely - Director of Administration
• Nelson Soler - Director of Minority Contracting

And that is just the top names. It should also be noted that Abele has yet to offer a reason for any of the firings, making one wonder if they were for cause or just because he was having another snit fit.

It would take no great leap of logic to deduce that it is probably Abele's poor (if not completely missing) management and people skills that has led to such a high turnover in his office and the difficulties he is having in hiring new people unless he gives them such outrageously generous compensation.

Given his difficulty in working with anyone and everyone and his dismal track record in just a couple of years, it might behoove Mr. Abele to take a good long hard look at himself - maybe even get some counseling or interpersonal skills coaching - and stop beclowning himself.  We'd all be better off for it.

Urban Irony

Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee had published a post last week in which he laments the Teapublican-controlled legislature's attacks on local control.  He has a fairly thorough list of the bigger attacks including issues like the regulation of cell phone towers and billboards as well as things like residency requirements.

Murphy sums things up well with this paragraph:

But this legislature has shown, time and again, that it will roll over for special interests even if means limiting the powers of local government. As a legislative analysis published by the League of Wisconsin Municipalities put it, the budget bill passed this year “reflects a lack of understanding or recognition of the key role municipalities play in job creation and the state’s economic recovery, and at worse, represents a calculated attack on home rule.”

This is all true and I have no umbrage with what he has written.

But I do take offense by the one special interest and the one attack of local control that Murphy failed to mention, which diminishes the impact of an otherwise powerful piece.

He failed to include Chris Abele spending money hand over fist and having his county executive office staff in Madison lobbying to pass Act 14, which greatly diminished the representative democracy of Milwaukee County government and gave Abele an imbalance of power, opening the door for the gross incompetence and corruption that we are already seeing with Abele's administration.  Two of the people benefiting from Abele's largess were State Representatives Joe Sanfelippo and Dale Kooyenga.

Furthering the fact that this power grab is indeed a removal of local control, the law also forbids the county to have any other referendums outside of the red herring one Abele insisted on which decides if the Board will be further hindered by being forced into a part-time status.

Needless to say, Murphy omitted this key example of the state legislature taking away local control because he supported it in this case, to the point of misrepresenting the facts and omitting key pieces of information in his efforts to assist Abele's power grab.

Because of the Murphy's support for the power grab, it makes his complaint of the loss of local control ring hollow.