Of Fundraising, Funerals And Ethics Fundamentals

A couple of weeks ago, I introduced the gentle reader to Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander, a "rising" star among the Republicans. Alexander had gotten herself in a bit of trouble for using taxpayer dollars to help suppress the vote in Milwaukee. To make matters worse for herself, she got caught up in her lies about it.

Now Alexander is in even more hot water.

Unfortunately, her father passed away recently. And as anyone who has lost a loved one knows, funerals are expensive, even if you are making more than $50,000 a year like Alexander is.

So Alexander set up a fundraising account through www.youcaring.com.

The problem is that she advertised this account on one of her Facebook pages in which she identifies herself as a "public figure" and includes a link to her campaign website:

She's already raised over $2,000, many donations from anonymous donors, including one for $1,000:

Yeah, that's an ethics problem, as Georgia Pabst of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

According to the county ethics code: "No county public official or employee shall use his/her public position or office to obtain financial gain or anything of substantial value for the private benefit of himself/herself or his/her immediate family, or for an organization with which he/she is associated."

Michael Maistelman, a lawyer who specializes in election law and who has represented the campaigns of prominent Democrats, said it appears Alexander is using her position for private gain.

"The question is would she be getting donations if she were not an elected public official," he said. "Would donations be made, or are they being made, because of who she is and her position."

With campaign contributions, contributors must give their name, address, employer and report the amount to make sure there's transparency, he said. Candidates must periodically file campaign finance reports that make that information public.

With an anonymous contribution, he said, someone could legitimately question whether there has been a violation of the public trust. That donor could be trying to get something from the county, but you don't know, Maistelman said.

To make this whole sordid affair even more sickening, she is using her office to raise funds for her father's funeral even as she voted to deny funding for indigent burials. (Over 300 families in Milwaukee County use indigent burial funds every year.)

As with most Republicans, she figures that as long she gets hers, that's all that matters and the screw the poor if they think they should get any type of help.

The good news is that Alexander won't get a free pass like she did with the voter suppression newsletters. A group called One Wisconsin Now has filed a formal complaint against Alexander:

"The law is clear and must be enforced," said Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now, in filing the complaint. "No elected official can use their status to raise personal funds, regardless of the circumstances."

Any anonymous gifts through the YouCaring.com site would make it difficult for the public to know who may be giving to Alexander and to determine if individuals with business before the county may be attempting to influence her, the complaint states.

Cross posted at Crooks and Liars

Courthouse Proud!

On Saturday, July 6, there was a massive fire at the Milwaukee County Courthouse which started when the very old and out of code electrical infrastructure started on fire.  Since the fire, Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele has been doing his best to control the message and the spin so that people don't focus on the cost of the clean up and repairs, the risk he is putting people in by opening parts of the courthouse too soon and the fact that the fire stemmed from his deferred maintenance and willful failure to replace the faulty equipment even though he had been warned of the danger.

While Abele is trying to come off as transparent and working real hard to fix the problem, there are things that he is omitting, besides the fact that he is responsible for the damage and added expense to the taxpayers.
Some of the highlights he somehow fails to mention include:

• People involved in the risk management field have said that if the fire had occurred at any other time than a holiday weekend, people would have probably died,
• Abele's Director of Risk Management, Cindy van Pelt, was on vacation starting the day before the fire and did not return until July 18th,
• The electrical equipment was known to easily overheat and they had large industrial fans blowing on it to keep it from overheating, and
• When Abele directed the Child Support Enforcement workers back to the courthouse, it was before their work area was clean.  The area was sooty, smoky and filled with dead roaches.  Workers were sent home for another day off with pay.

But now the hapless Abele has managed to make a bad situation for himself even worse.

It is being reported that Abele is launching a PR move called "Courthouse Proud." The idea was supposedly to recognize the public and private sector workers who toiled day and night to try to get the courthouse operational again.

But Abele has a few problems surrounding what should be a no-brainer thing.

First of all, the design he asked for could be an copyright infringement:

The "Courthouse Proud" logo features four blue upraised fists and forearms as pillars on the courthouse against a red background.

The much publicized and widely reprinted blue fist on "Stand with Wisconsin" posters during the 2011 battle over collective bargaining at the Capitol has just one clenched fist, blue against a red background.

David Eisner, contract administrator for District Council 48 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the banner and shirts won't sit well with many employees.

Abele is "trying to distract or distort the real issue and make it into kind of a pep rally thing," Eisner said. The courthouse's aging electrical infrastructure should have been maintained better so the fire didn't happen, he said.

"It's a buncha crap, that's what I say," said Eisner.

No cause of the fire has been established yet, according to county officials.

As for the blue fist image: "It is a little different, but it's a blue fist," Eisner said. "Is (Abele) starting a union of his own?" He questioned whether the use of the blue fist for the banner and shirts might infringe on the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations' "Stand with Wisconsin" imagery.

That alone stinks to high heaven. But is always the case when it comes to all things Abele, there's more. There's always more (emphasis mine):

The courthouse fist image was put together by staff at Laughlin Constable in response to a request from Don Tyler, the county's director of administrative services. Both Steve Laughlin and Tyler have served on the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Board.

The design work was done at no charge, said Evan Zeppos, a managing partner at the Laughlin firm.

[...]

The T-shirts were parceled out to those most heavily involved in cleanup efforts, Conway said. A tally of who got the 266 shirts distributed so far included staff from eight county departments, as well as workers from We Energies and two private contractors.

Conway said there were still some left over, but those are "somewhat spoken for," he said.

"You've got to earn it," he said.

In this little blurb, Abele has made a complete mockery of the county's Code of Ethics (Chapter 9).

The Standards of Conduct (Chapter 9.05) make it explicitly clear that no county official or employee can take or give anything of value or solicit for anything of value.

Yet we have Abele sending his Director of Administration to ask for a logo design which he gets free of charge.  Abele then turns around and starts doling out these t-shirts to those who "earn it."

Just about everything about his PR stunt has the potential to be illegal and actionable.

The fire might be out, but it doesn't look like anything is about to cool off anytime soon.

Purple Unicorns

Alexander and Abele
Searchers of the
Purple Unicorn

It's becoming increasingly obvious for all to see that Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander is in way above her head as she tried awfully hard to curry favor with Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele, the Greater Milwaukee Committee and their counterparts, the Bradley Foundation.

She cannot seem to help but run afoul of Chapter 9 of the Milwaukee County Ordinances - the Code of Ethics.  Basically it says to steer clear of conflicts of interest and not to use one's position for monetary or political gain for themselves or their family.

Sounds simple enough.  But like former supervisor Joe Sanfelippo, Alexander pays no heed to such things like ethical behavior.

First she receives work done by the Emperor's spokesman, Brendan Conway.  Even though it looked like an essay written by a third grader for a first grader, it was still a thing of value (Lord knows to whom, but to someone).

Then in May, because she was late to the Board meeting, she called for a Suspension of the Rules just so she could have her vote counted against overriding Abele's vetoes of reforming county government, even though her vote made absolutely no difference.  Two days later, Abele and representatives of GMC held a fundraiser for her.

Now Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting on yet another violation of the Ethics Code by Alexander.

Abele is upset because the Board voted in a super majority to terminate the services of Kimberly Walker, the inept and corrupt head of Corp Counsel.  As a result, Abele had Alexander issue an unsubstantiated complaint against the rest of the Board, accusing them of violating open record laws.

So far, Alexander has yet to produce one shred of evidence that anything illegal happened other than she said so. When challenged about the appropriateness of her charges and the fact that she is violating the Ethics Code herself, her only rational is "purple unicorns."

Regardless of this being a completely baseless complaint which was only issued in a feeble attempt at intimidating the Board, Rick Esenberg of the comically named Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has agreed to represent Alexander in her complaint.  And therein lies the rub.

Esenberg said that he's not charging Alexander, because the case is in the "public interest:"

It's not a problem at all, said Rick Esenberg, the lawyer representing Alexander.

He is the head of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a nonprofit law firm that uses the courts to pursue conservative and libertarian causes. It has received $1 million in start-up funds from the deep-pocketed Bradley Foundation.

Esenberg likened his outfit to the liberal American Civil Liberties Union, saying the two groups don't charge flat or hourly fees because they are litigating issues that are of interest to the general public.

"Deanna Alexander is not paying us with public money or campaign funds," Esenberg said. "We are public interest lawyers. We don't charge our clients fees."

Technically, Esenberg is being honest. As noted in the cited blurb, his group's clients are actually the Bradley Foundation, who is bankrolling his harassment of public officials.

However, because he is not charging Alexander, and she is the complaintant in this case, she is in violation of the Ethics Code again. Whether Esenberg does it pro bono, as part of the Bradley Foundation's directions or  the through funding by the GMC, the fact that Alexander is receiving it at no cost to her, she is violating the Code.

It's really gotten to the point where it's pointless to file charges with the Ethics Board (which is compromised anyway) and just let the District Attorney look into the matter.

At least the new pink uniforms that the women inmates wear at the House of Corrections would go nicely with the purple unicorns that Alexander looks for.