Chris Abele's Uncas Avenue Scandal Explodes

Last month, I reported that Milwaukee County Executive Emperor Chris Abele was planning on placing sex offenders in a quiet south side community even though he had promised the people in that neighborhood that he would do no such thing.

State Senator Chris Larson, State Representative Chris Sinicki, County Supervisor Jason Haas and City Alderman Terry Witkowski have been fighting very hard against this happening.

In recent days, more information has come out that shows that things are much, much worse than anyone had previously thought.

Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express dug into the story and learned a number of alarming facts.

Not only did Abele falsely promise that no sex offenders would be placed in the group on West Uncas Avenue, but the owner of the group home, Karl Rajani, had made the same false promise.  On top of that, Rajani tried to smooth the way by offering to pay off members of the community.

Needless to say, when elected officials that represent that area learned that Abele was going to place these sex offenders there, they were outraged.  From Kaiser's article:

Witkowski said he heard from neighbors that sex offenders would be placed on Uncas Avenue and that he contacted Abele for more information. He said he didn’t get a solid response from the county until after he called a press conference in November.

“This is the worst example of government I’ve ever seen as far as secrecy and not involving the public,” Witkowski told the Shepherd.

Supervisor Haas, who represents the area on the county board, said he found out about the facility after the fact and the board doesn’t have the ability to vote on it.
“This was done utterly in secret,” Haas said.

Kaiser also learned that the three-year contract to house the two sex offenders and two other patients being ousted from the mental health hospital was worth $5.5 million and was awarded in a no bid process.

Last week, residents of the West Uncas Avenue neighborhood attended the Milwaukee County Board's Health and Human Needs Committee.  While the residents were able to express their concerns, their anger and their frustration, they came away empty-handed.

Abele had had State Representative Joe Sanfelippo and Senator Alberta Darling ram through legislation that took away all authority the county board had over the county's mental health services.  The control of the county mental health services - and its budget - to an unelected Mental Health Board, populated with Abele's political appointees.

The citizens were told that the Mental Health Board was scheduled to take up this subject on Thursday, December 17.

The chairwoman of said board is Abele's disgraced former head of corp counsel, Kimberly Walker, who had been fired for gross incompetency and unethical behavior.  Walker told Kaiser that she would not allow public comment on the matter.

At the board meeting, even though the Uncas Avenue group home was the last item on the agenda, it was manipulated to be heard first so that any concerned citizens that showed up later would not even get to learn what happened, much less have any input.

But there's more. There's always more.

It was learned that the two sex offenders had been telling staff at the mental health complex - nurses, nursing assistants and doctors - that they were planning on reoffending once they were placed in the community.  It might have been that these statements were made to manipulate their situation and an effort to keep them from being placed in an unfamiliar and possibly unsafe situation.  But as with suicide threats, it needed to be taken seriously.

In an effort to alert the Mental Health Board to these newly found facts, Dennis Hughes spoke out at the meeting, telling board members of the threats being made by the offenders.

For his trouble, Walker had him escorted out of the room and then arrested (emphasis Kaiser's):

The Uncas Avenue facility was the last item on the agenda.

But Board Member Duncan Shrout moved that it be heard first. So even if Uncas Avenue residents had been allowed to speak, they would have been caught off guard and likely wouldn’t have been there to speak at 8 a.m.

The discussion was relatively superficial, which I’m sure was by design. Colon assured the board that all state, local and federal laws had been followed.

Board Chair Walker never told the board that Supervisor Dimitrijevic had made her request for public discussion. Nor did any board members bring up the fact that BHD administration had misled them on the $5.5 million contract. Nor did they discuss Uncas Avenue neighbors’ concerns about sex offenders living on their block.

So the board voted to table the issue.

And that’s when Hughes stood up, demanding to speak about the “imminent threat to public safety.”

And that’s when security moved in on him.

So that’s the true story of what happened this morning.

Again, for wanting to warn of a danger to public safety, Abele's political appointee had him arrested and hauled off. That is not an example of representative government. That is pure fascism.

To summarize, Abele gave a no bid contract worth $5.5 million to a group home to house sex offenders, even though he had told neighbors and their elected officials that he would not place the offenders there.  Then when someone speaks out to warn of an imminent danger to public safety - that the offenders were already planning to reoffend - they get arrested and carted off to jail.

Sadly, there's still even more.

People who have been following this situation closely have informed me that there were two other registered sex offenders listed as living at the mental health complex who are no longer listed as living there.  There current whereabouts are unknown except to Abele and his inner circle.

Now doesn't that make you feel better?

Any pretense that Abele is concerned about public safety or the wishes of the constituents he supposedly represents can be thrown out right now.

Just like his friend and mentor, Scott Walker, Abele is a firm believer in what you don't know won't hurt his campaign.

Chris Abele's Blood Stained Hands

When Chris Abele decided to privatize Milwaukee County's Behavioral Health Division, it raised red flags for the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, AFSCME and other unions.  They warned of the perils of doing this:

What really brings this all home is the fact that Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just came out with a four-part article regarding the struggles one family is having with the inadequate community-based support system that Abele is trying to tell people is all we need. Adding to the irony of the timing is the fact that the case manager in the story is from Milwaukee Center for Independence, the same agency that Abele is contracting with for the majority of services.

The end game of all of this is that if Abele continues on his amoral, irresponsible course, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the community receiving inadequate services, and presenting a danger to themselves or to others. After several contacts with police and various psychiatric service agencies, many of these people will end up in jail, in prison, in state institutions or, worst of all, dead.  These are prices in both the human and the fiscal sense that we should not have to take on, especially when it is all for the money grubbing of some of Abele's closest cronies.

But Abele would not abide having safety nets in place. He bleated about "best practices" and "moral obligations," and was cheered on by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Meg Kissinger.  Abele uses these cynical buzzwords to rationalize that he wants to close the mental health complex and sell it off - most likely to Froedtert Hospital and/or Children's Hospital - in another no bid sweetheart deal.

Instead of doing the right thing, Abele rand to his personally owned state representative, Joe Sanfelippo, and had the state legislature take away control of the mental health system from Milwaukee County. Rather, they created an unelected panel on Abele's cronies with taxing authority to auction off our most vulnerable citizens to corporate profiteers.

Sadly, the dire predictions of the county board and the unions have been realized.  A couple of weeks ago, a woman with a history of mental health issues and drug addiction, was taken out of jail and left out in the cold to die:

Janet R. Johnson was discovered by Milwaukee police about 6:15 a.m. Wednesday in the 3500 block of W. Clarke St. Officers had been sent to the area for a report of gunfire and found Johnson crawling on the street, cold to the touch and mumbling, according to reports released Thursday by the Milwaukee County medical examiner's office.

According to those records:

Johnson's pants were partially pulled down, and authorities have noted a common side effect of hypothermia is removing clothing, known as paradoxical undressing. She also was found with drug paraphernalia.

Detectives learned that Johnson, a chronic cocaine user, was released from jail about 9 a.m. Tuesday and went to Wisconsin Community Services, 3732 W. Wisconsin Ave., to find a home placement. From there, Johnson was taken to the United Community Center and was supposed to become an inpatient at the facility, but instead she was evaluated and discharged, the detective told medical investigators.

Johnson's father took her back to Wisconsin Community Services, where she stayed until about 2 p.m. Tuesday, when she left to go to Walgreens. She did not return.

When officers found her the next day, they called Milwaukee Fire Department paramedics who tried to revive her. She was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 9:09 a.m. Wednesday. Her body temperature was about 80 degrees, and medical investigators say complications of hypothermia have not been ruled out as a cause of death.

It took Abele nearly a full week to figure out that maybe, just maybe, there should be an investigation into Johnson's death.  Oddly, instead of Abele's Mental Health Board doing the investigation, Abele is having the Department of Health and Human Services looking into it.  Did Abele forget that the county has no say in its own mental health system, thanks to him?  Or is that he is looking to cover up the predicted failings of his privatization scheme?

One thing that is evident from the shoddy reporting is that the county and private agencies are busy pointing the fingers at each other and doing whatever they can to avoid taking their responsibility for this tragedy.  These are common problems with privatization - added expenses but less services and less accountability.

Two county supervisors - Michael Mayo, Sr, and Steve Taylor - have put the onus back on the Mental Health Board:

Dear Members of the Mental Health Board,

The family of Ms. Janet Johnson deserves an independent and impartial investigation into the tragic circumstances surrounding her death during the recent cold weather streak.

According to media reports, Ms. Johnson lived with a mental illness and had a series of contacts with the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex. Recently, police found her lying in the street partially clothed in below zero temperatures. Ms. Johnson died from exposure just a few short hours later.

The media reports added that Ms. Johnson had been diagnosed with schizophrenia earlier in her life and had been had been found in a snowbank with frostbite setting in last year. Further, she had been in and out of treatment facilities, including the Mental Health Complex. She was also placed in the Milwaukee County Jail shortly before her death.

Members of the community are concerned that people with serious mental health issues continue to suffer tragic consequences in Milwaukee. We are hopeful that your attention to this matter will result in the development of a clear line of accountability for the family and the public at large.

This tragedy also represents an opportunity for the Mental Health Board to develop a protocol to address complex cases like Ms. Johnson’s in the future. The public may find independent reviews, rather than department-led
ones, more credible when determining whether there was a lapse in the mental health network of care. Such a demonstration of impartiality can be critical to assure the public that the close personal and professional
relationships between contractors and a providers do not influence the findings of an independent investigation.

The public deserves answers regarding Ms. Johnson’s death, especially because of her many interactions with the mental health system and the jail. Specifically, what steps were taken by the jail, the Department of Health and Human Services, and community providers to ensure that Ms. Johnson received a proper home placement and appropriate health care?

The public has been left with the impression that Ms. Johnson was kicked out on the street when she was clearly unable to care for herself. Your attention to this matter is appreciated.

There have been no reports that the Mental Health Board will do their job regarding this case. Then again, the Mental Health Board only meets sporadically. Furthermore, since one of Abele's cronies is the head of the board, she won't take action unless Abele tells her to. Given Abele's nearly allergic aversion to responsibility, accountability and the truth, don't hold your breath for this to happen any time soon.

Make no mistake, the responsibility for Johnson's death lies squarely at Abele's feet and her blood is on his hands.  While the county and the private agencies try to distract with their finger pointing, it was Abele who willfully created this situation despite all the warnings.  He needs to take ownership of his role in this wholly avoidable tragedy.

Sadly, Abele will get away without blame, because as he learned from his friend and mentor, Scott Walker, no one cares about crazy people.

On a side note, it should also be noted that Kissinger is no longer bragging about her role in this fiasco.  Now why would that be?

Abele's Mental Health Board Boondoggle Worsens

As I have reported before, Milwaukee County Executive Chris "Boss" Abele is in a hurry to close up the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex so that he can sell the land to his wealthy friends.

When those pesky County Board Supervisors threatened to slow down the process of moving these vulnerable adults out by asking for common sense safety nets and precautions, Boss Abele did what he usually does when he doesn't get his way.  He threw a tantrum and ran to his friends, Scott Walker and the extremist Teapublicans in the state legislature, and had the mental health system removed from the county board's jurisdiction.

In place of the county board, Milwaukee's mental health system is overseen by Boss Abele's Mental Health Board.

From its conception, Abele's Mental Health Board has been a growing disaster.

First off, its formation was delayed while Walker and Abele selected their hand-picked political appointees to be on the board.

When the Board finally started to meet, their first job was to rubber stamp Boss Abele's budget for their system with no chance of analyzing it to see if it was sufficient.  However, more problems arose with the concern of whether their actions are even constitutional.  The Board has the authority to tax people but are not only not elected, they didn't even have public hearings on their budget.  In other words, it was taxation without representation.

This week, it was reported that Boss Abele's Mental Health Board still isn't ready for prime time:

Observers are raising questions about the Milwaukee County Mental Health Board and its plans for restructuring mental health care throughout the area. Formed in the spring, the board has yet to begin formal discussions on how it will lead the transformation to a decentralized health care system focused on community-based facilities.

According to board member Mary Neubauer, the board was initially faced with budget and organizational issues that required its attention and is now ready to make progress on its main mission. Chairperson Kimberly Walker said in an email that the board has discussed priorities that it will “flesh out” at its Dec.18 meeting.

“Once the board identifies priorities and goals, we will work in collaboration with the administration to see that strategic plans are developed and implemented,” Walker wrote.

In other words, they still don't know what they are doing. They don't even know what they want to be doing.

Yet, while the Board is trying to find itself, Boss Abele is still pushing vulnerable citizens out of the complex, with or without proper support systems that will be able to meet their needs and keep them safe.

But, wait! With all things Abele, there is more.

Not only does Abele's Mental Health Board without direction, they are also lacking even the most basic support:

The 13-member board operates without a dedicated staff, raising uncertainty about how it will carry out its responsibilities. “Board members have a hunger for data and information but that raises questions about how the board will function without anyone on staff to gather the information,” said Rob Henken, director of the Public Policy Forum in Milwaukee.

Questions also remain about how the board will manage the makeover of the mental health care system. “No one knows yet what level of oversight the board will choose for itself,” Henken said. “Will it be like a traditional board of directors that sets an agenda, or will it be more administrative and focus on day-to-day details?”

Neubauer said that some level of support staff is “most definitely needed” to gather data and provide analysis for the board to make decisions. Once armed with the information it needs, she believes, the board can lead the mental health care transformation.

[...]

Added Barbara Beckert, Milwaukee director of Disability Rights Wisconsin, “One of the concerns we had from the beginning was who will be supporting the board,” she said. “It is very important to have an independent staff that the board can direct in an analytical role. But to date that has not been available.”

The board has the ability to hire its own independent staff and assign responsibilities, according to Beckert. Until now, the county has proved some administrative support and information gathering.

Well, isn't that special?

Because the Mental Health Board is still lacking any independent reports or analyses, they are forced to rely on information spoon fed to them by Boss Abele, who's proven time and time again to be less than a reliable source of information.

By the time that the Mental Health Board will be ready to do their job, a lot of damage will already be done and most of these vulnerable adults - as well as the taxpayers - will have been thrown to the corporate vultures.

But it is not all bad news.

In their meeting on Thursday, the Mental Health Board, at the persistence of AFSCME, was able to gain a guarantee that Abele would not continue to try to treat the county workers at the mental health complex differently than other county workers.  This will mean sparing those workers thousands of dollars in unnecessary pay cuts.

The Mental Health Board has also taken action, again due to the persistence of the unions, to start to address the serious safety issues that are present at the mental health complex caused by Boss Abele's incompetent handling of the system.

That's more than Abele has done in the four years he's been running the place.

Boss Abele's Mental Health Board Boondoggle

From the time he took office, Boss Abele had set his sights on closing the Milwaukee County mental health complex.  He did so not because he wanted to improve the system, but because he wants to sell the land it sits on to his plutocratic pals before its value skyrockets.  Abele has been bragging about already getting bids on the land.  As an added bonus, he could help other wealthy friends  profiteer off of these vulnerable citizens.

When that meddling Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors put brakes to his plans by demanding accountability and proper discharge planning, Abele did what he usually does when he doesn't get his way - he ran to his Teapublican friends in the state legislature and paid them to pass a law saying that the county board no longer has a say in how that money is spent.

When he got his way with the creation of his Mental Health Board, he then made sure they did his bidding by getting his political appointees on the board, including the disgraced Kimberly Walker, who was fired from her job as head of corporation counsel for incompetence and for trying to help Abele circumvent open records laws.

While the Board has been off to a bad start, with Scott Walker delaying rubber stamping Abele's political appointees and a number of unsuccessful discharges, things are only getting worse.

Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has finally, after slapping herself on the back for months for influencing people and helping create this disaster, gotten around to reporting that all might not be legal with the Mental Health Board.She finally gets to the part that this politically appointed board gets to decide how to spend $180 million without one word of public input:

The budget approved by the Mental Health Board was forwarded to Abele, who included it in his general budget, which is passed along to the County Board for approval. By law, the County Board cannot change the levy assigned to the Behavioral Health Division.

Romo West said she didn't understand why the Mental Health Board had to "rubber stamp" the department's budget in August when the county's budget is not voted on until November.

To vote to spend the money without getting public comment is "taxation without representation," Romo West said.

The Mental Health Board needs to establish a process that includes public comment, she said.

Supervisor Pat Jursik called the Mental Health Board's action a "constitutional violation of due process."

Mary Neubauer, a member of the new board who also serves as co-chair of the Milwaukee Mental Health Task Force, was one of two to vote "no" to the budget.

Neubauer said Wednesday that she voted that way because there was no public comment. The other no vote came from Brenda Wesley, director of education and outreach for the Milwaukee chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Neubauer is asking that the board allow public comment at its next meeting on Oct. 23.

"There hasn't been transparency in this process," Neubauer said.

Neubauer said public opinion is critical, especially with all the anxiety surrounding the downsizing of long-term units at the Mental Health Complex.

Of course, Kissinger's reporting is a little less than honest since this issue was brought up seven months ago by Supervisor Michael Mayo:

Milwaukee County Supervisor Michael Mayo, Sr., said today that a bill passed unanimously by the state Senate that would strip the Milwaukee County Board of its oversight of the County’s mental health system was an example of taxation without representation.

“This is an example of an outrageous overreach by the state Legislature,” said Mayo, a member of the Health and Human Needs Committee. “It seems the philosophy in Madison is to stick it to Milwaukee County. This bill strips an elected body – the County Board – of the oversight of one of the biggest budget items in the County and replaces it with an unelected board that can spend taxpayer money without any public representation.

“What you have with this bill is a power grab generated by sensational headlines in the media. Once this bill is signed by the Governor and becomes law, the public will have little input into the oversight of the mental health system. This will be taxation without representation.”

Under the bill, members of the new board will be submitted to Governor from a list submitted by the County Executive and the County Board.

“An unelected board will not necessarily represent the interests of taxpayers,” Mayo said. “Who will be accountable? Who will take the blame when this system fails? Who will my constituents call when they have a problem with the mental health system? What happened in Madison was wrong for Milwaukee County taxpayers.”

Oh, but that's not all. There's more. There's always more.

According to Paul Bargren, Boss Abele's new head of corp counsel, in a letter dated August 18, 2014, the Mental Health Board doesn't even have to show the Milwaukee County Board - or anyone else - a copy of their budget, unless they file an open records request.

Keep in mind that they are in control of $180 million dollars, more than one third of that comes directly from the tax levy. Yet no one except the Mental Health Board and Boss Abele have one say in how it is spent - especially not the taxpayers themselves.

The way Abele's law is written, the Milwaukee County Board has no option but to just rubber stamp that part of the county budget.  They cannot add to it, they cannot take away from it.  The county board asked for clarification from Bargren about this, and in a letter dated September 3, 2014, Bargren made it clear that the county board had no choice and that if they didn't rubber stamp the Mental Health Board's budget, they could be charged with Misconduct in Office.

There isn't much the County Board can do now to correct this violation of the Constitution, but they can definitely let people know the truth of the situation.  That is why the Finance and Personnel Committee passed a resolution on Friday that reads in part:

BE IT RESOLVED, that the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors hereby opposes the concept that requires the BHD property tax levy to be incorporated into the adopted County budget, as opposed to a separate County-administered tax levy for BHD, and;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors shall incorporate the proposed 2015 BHD tax levy of $59,099,341 as contained in the County Executive's Recommended Budget (File No. 14-765) into the 2015 Adopted Budget as required by 2013 Wisconsin Act 203;  and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that in light of the new legislation creating the Mental Health Board, Milwaukee County residents are hereby informed that the proposed 2015 BHD tax levy represents a County Executive recommended tax levy increase of approximately $1.62 million that must be incorporated into the 2015 Adopted Budget.

In other words, they are washing their hands of the mess and laying the onus of the higher tax levy where it belongs, at the feet of Boss Abele.

Now some people might be OK with the lack of representation, but I am not.  And I know of a lot of people who are also not OK with this.  Abele's new system is nothing more than abandoning the  county's responsibility to our most vulnerable citizens and a disservice to the taxpayers of Milwaukee County.

And if the funding for the system proves to be inadequate, which it probably will, then there will be even more serious problems as people go without the services they need to keep themselves and others safe.

As a note of interest, the Mental Health Board had a meeting last week.  Members of the MHB are apparently finally catching on that the pap that Boss Abele is spoon-feeding them through Kimberly Walker isn't accurate and are calling on the meetings to be open to public commentary so that they can learn the truth of how Milwaukee County is failing these vulnerable citizens.