Misrepresentation Led The Way to Underrepresentation

As the gentle reader is aware, there was a lot - and I do mean a lot - of nefarious doings by Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele, his plutocratic pals at the Greater Milwaukee Committee and their collective minions that led up to the hostile takeover of Milwaukee County.

We have learned of some of these nefarious doings through the emails of Abele and his minions, some of which have been very revealing.  And included in those revealing emails, we learn that a favorite henchman is his spokesman, Brendan Conway.  We learned how Conway was responsible for releasing the attack on State Senator Chris Larson because Larson dared to oppose the hostile takeover.

We also had learned that County Supervisor Deanna Alexander was working in collaboration with Team Abele throughout the process.  She was so cooperative with them, one might have mistaken her for one of Abele's staffers.  As I have pored over the emails, there are numerous ones from Alexander to Abele's office, sharing County Board documents.

What we didn't realize was just how close of a working relationship Alexander had with Abele's office.

On February 5, 2013, we see that Conway sent Alexander an email that included a first draft of a press release stating that Alexander was calling for a state audit of the Board and Executive's office:

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Alexander responded a few minutes later, thanking Conway and stating she would look at it.

Early the next morning, Alexander emails the County Board Communications Director, Velia Alvarez, asking her to send out an attached press release:

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The gentle reader can see the actual press release here.  She also issued a rather childishly written memo including her proposed resolution.  As the gentle reader can see, the wording has been altered to a small extent, but the gist is exactly the same.

The gentle reader should also take note that Alexander sent a blind carbon copy to Conway.  This is a small but significant detail which will play a larger role shortly.

After Alexander issued her press release, Steve Schultze, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter who covers Milwaukee County, sent an email to Conway, asking how Abele felt about Alexander's proposal.

Conway's response to Schultze was particularly odd, considering that Alexander had included him in her email with the press release hours earlier:

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As you can see, Conway is denying knowing that Alexander had issued a press release, even though he helped write it and knew exactly what was in the press release as well as the accompanying memo.  Heck, for all we know, he wrote the memo too.

A little less than an hour later, Conway responds to Schultze, claiming that Abele was in Madison and unavailable, but issued a statement in favor of the audit.  But even this was not without a hitch:

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  As you can see, Conway returns the favor by including Alexander in a blind carbon copy as well.  At least they were working to keep their stories straight.

Ironically, when the County Board called for a full audit, Abele dismissed it as being an attempt to stall for time.  Can you say hypocrite?

Interestingly, Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee caught this as well and asked Alexander about it on February 12, 2013.  Her reply was rather telling in that she admitted that her audit was meant to be in collusion with the state's ramming through of the takeover.  Also interesting is this time not only did she bcc Conway but included Representative Joe Sanfelippo, the sockpuppet that introduced the Plutocracy Bill for Abele and the GMC:

I find it interesting but not surprising that Team Abele would punk Schultze and try to get him to print what they want him too, just like Abele did with Aaron Rodriguez and other bloggers.  But it appeared that Murphy was already square in Abele's pocket, so why did they need to punk him too?  Was he still too independent in his thought or was it that they were just so used to pulling stunts like this that they couldn't help themselves.

While this whole sordid affair might not rise to the level of criminal activity, there is certainly some serious ethical questions.  And speaking of questions, this new discovery raises many other questions which calls for further exploration:

• Did Conway write other press releases, commentary, or documents for Alexander?
• Did Alexander ask Conway to write the document(s) or did Abele tell him to do it?
• If Conway wrote the press release at Alexander's request, was Abele aware? (The emails shows that Conway sent a copy of his draft to Raisa Koltun, Abele's legislative aide.)
• If what they were doing was legitimate, why did they blind carbon copy each other so much?  That would seem to be a tacit admission that what they were doing was at the very least unethical.
• Will the fact that Alexander was sharing so much information with Abele's office, will she be censured for it, like former Supervisor Lynne De Bruin was?

Stay tuned, gentle reader.  I sense that when it comes to all things Abele - just like it does with his hero and role model, Scott Walker - there is more.  There is always more.

Abele Is Paying New Parks Director $140,000 To Spin Off, Privatize Parks

On Thursday, Milwaukee County Executive Emperor Chris Walker Romney Abele  announced that he was hiring John Dargle to be the new Parks Director.

At the time, I noted something that was conspicuous by its absence - no one was talking about how much Dargle was getting paid.  I felt it important to know, since Abele is getting the county sued for paying women less for doing the same job as their male predecessors.

So I sent a Open Records Request to Abele's office asking for Dargle's salary.

Abele's passive aggressive spokesman, failed TV reporter Brendan Conway, sent back the following email on Friday:

In case the gentle reader has difficulty making it out, here it is again:

Charles,*

In response to your request, Mr. Dargle will be paid $140,000.

Brendan Conway
Communications Director
Office of County Executive Chris Abele
Phone:  414.278.5281
Cell: 414.394.7710

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Data on Demand, Sue Black, Dargle's predecessor, made $126,990 in 2011:

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Dargle is getting paid more than $13,000 more than Black did doing the same job and having the same credentials.  The only difference is that Dargle is a man and Black is a woman.

Update: Per this MJS article, Abele gave Black another raise just before he fired her, putting her salary after many years of service at about the same level as Dargle's starting pay.

I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I am starting to see a real pattern here.

Then again, it might not be just gender involved with the fact that Abele is paying Dargle so much money.  It could be that Dargle comes from a Parks Authority, meaning that they had spun the parks off into a quasi-privatized agency already.  And spinning off the parks into such an entity has long been one of Abele's and GMC's many goals.

If your thinking that this might be no big deal, look at how well it worked out for New York City:

When New York began relying on public-private parks partnerships following the fiscal crisis of the seventies, the idea was that private philanthropic groups would pick up the slack. And they did. Groups like the Central Park Conservancy, the Prospect Park Alliance, and the Bryant Park Corporation rose to respond to that crisis. But the city’s newest parks, paid for and operated largely by nonpublic dollars, are girded tightly by their private patrons.

The High Line was invented as a park by Friends of the High Line, which raised $44 million in donations and helped select the design. Celebrity endorsements (Edward Norton, Diane Von Furstenberg), caps on visitor attendance, adjacent real-estate development, and a dense police presence compared to other parks have all contributed to the appearance of something less than fully public. Elsewhere, the Parks Department has met with a local interest group called Coalition for a Better Washington Square Park, which offered to hire its own security and maintenance forces for the newly renovated green. Parks turned them down but did “discuss the designs of the next phase of renovation.” And in order to build the $350 million Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, a public agency, is using the private developers of luxury condos like One Brooklyn Bridge Park to pay for the maintenance of its public front yard (never mind what’ll happen if the condos don’t sell).

Expect more of the same. “What’s happening on a basic level is that the city does not feel that parks are its responsibility anymore,” says Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates. “But every community deserves to have healthy parks, not just ones that have wealthy benefactors.”

[...]

But more and more private control — you can purchase time in a “public” basketball court for a fashion show, as happened in May with designer Joseph Abboud in Greenwich Village, or pay to park a branded exhibition in Central Park, as Chanel did last fall — has become the norm. The question is how much more that means. “While privatization has brought some very good management techniques, like at Bryant Park, the nice thing about it so far is that we don’t have ‘Exxon Bryant Park,’ ” says Christian DiPalermo, the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks. Well, not yet.

So yes, it's very conceivable that we will be paying for the parks twice - once through our taxes and again as a user's fee.

That's how Abele defines efficiency.

*Do you suppose he calls Abele Charles or just Chuck? Oh, and this immaturity is what is passing for leadership in Abele's administration. Explains a lot, doesn't it?