Who's Really To Blame For Milwaukee County Transit Deficit

The Milwaukee Country Transit System is a hot mess right now.  It is nearly $11 million in the hole right now.  MCTS officials blame their deficit on unexpected overtime, lower ridership, people getting on board without paying their fare and private contractors not meeting their obligations.

To make matters worse, transit officials have known about this for months, but have only just now come clean on it. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the finger pointing game is already ridiculous:

 "It's like they're way too reactionary. They're way too slow moving, and the fact it takes weeks to notify us that you're starting to see a problem, that is an issue," Supervisor Steve Taylor, the finance committee's vice-chair, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after reviewing the timeline.

The report also shows on June 23, following the agency's release of its May financial report, the County Executive's Office shared concerns with MCTS that it had not communicated the "severity of the budget situation" with supervisors prior to notifying the public, and "acting independently regarding major implications of service changes."

Days later, county Comptroller Liz Sumner said she was "stunned to learn through the media" of MCTS' projected deficit for 2025, given the reports she had been receiving projected a "balanced budget" for the end of the year. Sumner called for an audit of the agency as well as an analysis of the agency's finances to be carried out by her own office.

On July 1, Donna Brown-Martin, executive director of the county transportation department since 2018, resigned. A week later, Interim President and CEO Julie Esch resigned from MCTS

OK, so the two top MCTS officials resigned. That's just a start though.  

I need more answere from Summer on how she didn't know and only learned it through the media.  Where was she for the past six months?  Maybe we should do an audit on her office as well as MCTS.

The fact of the matter is that this has been a long time coming.  There once was a time when this sort of thing would never have gotten this big or gone on for so long before the Milwaukee County Board would have caught it and taken action.  

Their ability to do that ended about ten years ago, when then Milwaukee County Executive and Plutocrat Chris Abele colluded with Republican state legislators to pass Act 14, which gutted the county board and made them less than half-time employees. Act 14 also decimated the system of checks and balances that exists in functional governments.   

While most of the damage was done, the voters approved of this by large numbers, thanks to a strong advertising blitz by Abele, the Republicans, and people like Bruce Murphy, editor of Urban Milwaukee.

It should be noted that current leaders like the current county executive, David Crowley, hasn't lifted a finger to fix the problem, or even pretend to care.

Remember this when we go to vote next year.  All levels of government needs a good cleaning and purging of thos that serve the wealthy and not the people.

Chris Abele's Transit Crisis

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Milwaukee County transit workers - bus drivers and mechanics - took direct action by going on a three day work stoppage. The work stoppage came after three months of working without a contract and their employer, Milwaukee Transit System (MTS), a private nonprofit company contracted to run the transit system, failing to negotiate a new contract with the union.

To complicate things, MTS cannot even strike a contract with their employees. The contract has to be approved by Milwaukee County Executive Emperor Chris Abele, who has a large influence on what MTS can offer to their workers.

Like any conservative, anti-union acolyte of austerity would do, Abele is claiming that the union is being greedy and doesn't care about the taxpayers and that the county is broke, all in the effort to turn the public from the union:

In a time when State transportation funding has been flat and Federal funding has declined, ATU members rejected multiple contract compromises that increased overall compensation while allowing for the continuation of full transit services, stable fares, and respect for County taxpayers.

Throughout negotiations, the County has and will continue to remain focused on one outcome only – the best service for transit riders now and in the future. The emphasis is on providing a high quality transit system while modernizing and expanding services.

“From low income workers to Summerfest attendees, the ATU’s decision to strike has far reaching consequences for the people of Milwaukee County,” Abele said. “To be clear, the final added concessions today represent our last, best offer. Anything more than this is unsustainable in our County budget and would be irresponsible to the taxpayers we serve.”

In reality, compensation and benefits are only a small part of the problem. The unions have a number of other issues that Abele refuses to address. These issues include:

• Adequate time for bathroom breaks - Some routes allow only four minutes for the driver to stop the bus, find a business with a bathroom, use it, and get back on the road. Some drivers have taken to wearing diapers on the job because of the inadequate time allowed.
• Safety - Drivers have repeatedly been robbed, threatened and assaulted while driving their routes.
• Job security - Abele wants to hire hundreds of part time drivers so that he doesn't have to give them a pension or benefits. The union fears that this will lead to all part time driver and harm the pension fund since no one will be paying into it.

Abele has a couple, three other problems with his argument as well.

Abele is telling the public that the average driver is paid about $62,000 per year. What he fails to mention is that this number includes an average of eight hours of overtime per week. The actual salary for a driver is under $50,000 per year without the overtime - about the average income.

Abele's claim that the county cannot afford to do more is also utter bullshit.

Abele has refused to raise taxes since taking office, so he has not fully utilized funding streams that could not only support but also expand the transit system.

On top of that, in recent weeks, Abele has found enough money to:

• Sell a county owned building worth $10 million for $500,000
• Lease a county park for one dollar
• Give up $80 million - taken from the county's poorest citizens - to help build a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks
• Sell 30 acres of county-owned land to the Bucks owners for one dollar
• Spend $100,000 for private security guards who normally serve Hollywood stars and a $50,000 chauffeur-driven SUV

If Abele can find enough money to benefit himself and his fellow millionaires, he can find enough to adequately compensate the bus drivers and mechanics.

If the gentle reader still had any doubt who is in the right in this, keep in mind that the unions have repeatedly offered to go to arbitration. Abele and MTS have refused every offer to do so. What are they afraid of other than they would be found to be unfair in their negotiations?

Call Chris Abele at 414-278-4211 or email him at CountyExec@milwaukeecountywi.gov and tell him to stop grandstanding for his millionaire buddies at the country club and to sit down at the negotiating table and respect the hard working men and women of the transit system.

Another Top Aide To Boss Abele Bails On Him

The rats keep fleeing the sinking ship:

The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) is proud to announce the hiring of Brendan Conway as its new Chief Marketing and Communications Officer.

In this role, Conway manages the Marketing team and oversees MCTS’ customer communication efforts. He will also help develop strategies to insure a cohesive brand and message across departments, while overseeing public relations and social media efforts to build MCTS’ brand and managing advertising campaigns to maintain and increase ridership. Conway reports directly to Dan Boehm, Managing Director of MCTS.

“I’m excited to have Brendan on our team; his energy, experience, ideas and fresh perspective will help us continue to move MCTS back to a ‘Best in Class’ transit system,” Boehm said.

Conway comes to Milwaukee County Transit after serving three years as Director of Communications for Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele. In that role he served as spokesperson for County Executive Chris Abele and helped drive communication efforts around County Executive Abele’s key initiatives, including improvements to parks, public safety and transit, as well as mental health reform and additional support and programs for veterans.  Prior to working for Milwaukee County, Conway spent 14 years as an award winning broadcast journalist, including eight-and-a-half years at WISN-TV in Milwaukee.

Hiring Conway is a surprising move by MCTS, especially given the way he has been trashing them in an effort to advance Boss Abele's efforts to privatize the entire system. It is also a surprising hire, given that only a handful of corporate Democrats even like the arrogant, adolescent Conway.

Perhaps MCTS thought that by hiring Abele's boy, they are buying some protection from Abele.  More likely they just hired a mole that will try to destroy them from the inside.

This move does leave another burning question though.

Now who will write Deanna Alexander's press releases for her?

Necessities Before Niceties, People Before Plutocrats

Chris Abele and the rest of the plutocracy are amping up their big push to get public funding to build a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks.  The latest of this comes in the form of a "study" done by the Public Policy Forum, which is an elitist version of the MacIver Institute.    The study comes up with a number or "hypothetical scenarios:" in which the plutocrats can tap into public funding for the arena.

The plutocrats are so desperate to have more taxpayer money being funneled into their pockets that they are trying to hold Milwaukee's cultural assets as ransom to get at the money for the arena.

Of course, Abele is all in favor of using taxpayer money for the arena. Then if there is any money left over, he might let some go to our cultural assets.  Although he's made it pretty clear that he thinks that buildings like the Veterans War Memorial Center should be razed so that the lakefront can be enjoyed by the ultra rich and only the ultra rich.

The fact that Abele is putting plutocrats over people is not new.  I reported fifteen months ago that Abele was following Tommy Thompson's "stick it to them" routine by supporting a sales tax to build a new arena.  To show what a freaking hypocrite Abele is, even as he was pushing for a sales tax for the arena, he said that a sales tax that served a necessity such as the transit system was too regressive and would let the state off the hook for their responsibility.

Apparently, sales taxes are only regressive when the majority of the community benefits as opposed to the elite few.  And speaking of them, I'm sure that Abele would testify that each and every member of his millionaire's club known as the Greater Milwaukee Committee is suffering inconsolably, and needs the help to build their new playground.

But the plutocrats have some issues to overcome if they want to get this tax rammed through.

Their first problem is that there is very little support for this.  At their first "listening session," only six people showed up.  At their next one, there was only about 50 people.  Out of all the people in the region, that's a negligible amount.

Furthermore, Racine County, Waukesha County and Ozaukee County have all come out against being part of any type of regional funding source for this playground.

If Milwaukee County Supervisor John Weishan gets his resolution approved, Milwaukee County could have a referendum this fall on whether they want their tax dollars go to this plutocratic welfare.

Any approval for further supporting the plutocrats seems unlikely, especially since they have just announced that the Miller Park sales tax will be extended again and will likely last until at least 2020.

The plutocrats will also have a hard time persuading people to jump on their bandwagon since their arguments are nothing more than empty rhetoric.

They say we need the new arena to be a big league city. But when they built the current arena in the late 1980s, that didn't affect our standing at all.  Whey they built Miller Park in 2001, we got no gain from it.  They need to explain how this new arena would suddenly make us more prominent on the map.

The plutocrats have tried to point to Oklahoma City as a guide on why we need to build the new arena.  But as Brewtown Gumshoe points out, Oklahoma City has a lot of things we don't, like warmer weather and Big Oil to help fund things.  He also points out that they also have a much lower quality of life.  (It is a right to work state, so it's expected that they have lower salaries and higher levels of poverty.)

On top of it all, the plutocrats will need to show what benefit there is to building an arena.  In short, arenas are money losers for the community:

Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys found, "The multiplier for spending on sports in a city may be substantially smaller than the multiplier on other forms of entertainment spending, perhaps the most plausible explanation. The majority of the revenues from professional sports go into salaries for players, managers, coaches, trainers, scouts and to income for the ownership. Most of these individuals, especially the more highly paid ones, do not live full time in the city where the games take place. Unlike the wages and salaries paid to employees of local restaurants, movie theaters, car dealerships, department stores, etc., the large salaries earned by players and coaches leak out of the local economy."

This whole discussion is a fine example of what it wrong with the county, the state and even the nation.

Milwaukee County has many needs that are not being addressed:

• The transit system needs dedicated funding before it collapses
• The mental health system is about to collapse while Abele abandons the chronically mentally ill without leaving them a safety net
• There are hundreds of thousands of dollars of deferred maintenance left from Walker and further neglected by Abele

Yet despite all of these immediate needs, the elite plutocrats are trying to take more money out of the system so that they can have a new play thing, regardless of how many people might be further hurt by the continued neglect of society.

It's obvious that Abele doesn't even have a clue of what is happening in his own county.  The view from his ivory tower apparently has some significant blind spots.  Which is all the more reason we nee to get rid of him as soon as possible.  Despite all of his money, most people who don't have an umbilical cord attached to his checkbook are ready for a change and see his vulnerability.

Milwaukee County Dodged Bigger Money Vulture Than Previously Realized

Last week, I wrote about how Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele again thought himself to be above rigged the bidding process in order to pick the for-profit, Texas-based MV Transportation (MV stands for Money Vultures) to take over the Milwaukee County Transit System.  I also pointed out that besides the shady and suspect way that Abele manipulated the process to pick MV Transportation, the company itself has a lengthy history of labor struggles, poor performance and scandalous actions.
the law and had

Fortunately, the County's Administrative Review Panel had a hearing on the bidding process and found that the bidding process was indeed flawed and that the contract could not be given to MV Transportation.

As to be expected, Abele tantrummed about it:

The Milwaukee County Board today cost taxpayers $76.3 million by rejecting a new transit contract.

MV Transportation, a nationally recognized and respected company, was awarded the transit contract last year after winning a competitive bidding process. Two of the losing bidders filed appeals with the County Board. Today, a special committee hand-picked by County Board leaders, spent five minutes in open session and quickly voted to not allow the contract.

“The decision today upholds the status quo and costs taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. Our transit system has been on life-support for years, this contract would have allowed us to put more money into bus service and remake a broken system,” County Executive Chris Abele said. “The County Board’s decision lacks factual support or legal reasoning and it should concern every resident of Milwaukee County who wants their government to save money and run more efficiently.”

Not even a week later, it is being reported that Milwaukee County not only dodged another bullet by rejecting Abele's corrupt plan, but that the bullet was much bigger and more damaging than originally thought.

Via Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express, we find an article in the Dallas News which indicated that things with MV Transportation is worse than previously known.

First we find that their service in Dallas was extremely poor, so much so that the contract had to be redone to such an extent that it was questioned whether it wouldn't be better to start from scratch.  And on top of that, the vulture capitalists running the company are ready to sell it off as fast as possible:

Dallas Area Rapid Transit board members are poised Tuesday to overhaul and extend a $185.9 million contract with the controversial company that provides transportation for elderly and disabled passengers.

The move comes as MV Transportation is putting itself up for sale and after the transit agency has spent months weathering criticisms about the vendor’s performance.

A majority of DART’s 14 board members voiced support for the contract changes earlier this month. But some board members say the alterations are so vast they should solicit other companies’ bids rather than negotiate exclusively with MV.

And yes, there's more:

Veolia and MV were among the companies that submitted bids. MV won. Its takeover of paratransit was a disaster. Passengers complained about poorly trained drivers, out-of-the-way routes and long wait times.

Many of the criticisms echoed public complaints government entities across the country faced after they hired MV for paratransit and bus services. MV declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing contract negotiations with DART.

The contract restructuring is meant to cover MV’s costs of making operational changes aimed to assuaging riders’ complaints. DART would still save money overall, but changes would likely eat up about $26.3 million in potential savings.

Dick Alexander is the senior vice president for Veolia Transportation. He said the decrease in potential savings under the proposed contract changes is essentially a loss to the public agency.
“That would go to DART and other DART projects,” he said of the lost savings. “Under this scenario, that money’s going to go straight to MV’s pocket.”

So the company is doing such a poor job that to fix the problems is that the cost of fixing the problems was so much, it ate up the savings.  Furthermore, MV was able to manipulate the situation that it would be the taxpayers taking the hit and not their profit margin*.

And anyone's guess is as good as the next as to what would happen when and if the sale of the company goes through.

Instead of his grandstanding and pity parties, Abele should grow up and apologize to the taxpayers for putting them at risk.  Furthermore, he should just resign from office and refer himself to the DA's office for his bid-rigging scheme.  Then again, he has already shown himself to be just as bad - if not worse - than Scott Walker, so he probably has no sense he did anything wrong.

*A profit margin made by laying off workers and cutting services to the elderly and disabled.  This is what Abele calls efficiency?

Abele Wants To Take Us For A Ride

About a year ago, Chris Abele had one of his now infamous temper tantrums and fired Frank Busalacchi, the then head of the public works and transportation department.  Unfortunately, at the time of Abele's tantrum, there was a snafu happening in the subcontracting of paratransit services.  The result of not having anyone to respond to the managing company, Milwaukee Transit Services (MTS) was a $9 million bill that could have been avoided.

Instead of owning up to the responsibility of his actions, Abele used MTS as a scapegoat and vowed that they would lose their contract to run the county's transit system.

To fulfill that vow, Abele put out a request for bids and set up a Byzantine system that involved a secret panel of "experts" and a backwards bidding system in which Abele set the price and the proposed vendors came up with the specifics.

The results of this stunt was that a for-profit company based in Texas, MV Transportation*, was named the winner.  But Abele refused to explain what his decision was based on or allow anyone to see any of the documents to confirm that this was indeed the best deal.

Two of the companies that lost the bidding process - MTS and Veolia Transportation - filed complaints and ultimately a lawsuit to get the documents regarding the bidding process.  Once the papers were released because of a court order, it quickly became obvious why Abele didn't want them made public.

Thanks to the intrepid reporting by Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express, we learned that it turned out that MV Transportation actually lost in four of the five categories the bidding was based on.  The sections in which they failed were related to service.  The only section that MV Transportation won was on price.  But even then, transit experts pointed out that MV Transportation low-balled their bid.

To help ensure MV Transportation won the contract, Abele's people went back to ask them for "clarification."   Abele did not do this for any of the other companies that had bid on the contract.

Once Abele announced them the winner, MV Transportation has already shown that their bid was a bait and switch routine by asking to renegotiate their fee:

In response, MV more or less said that it wanted to renegotiate its expenses after it won the contract.

“If selected, the company respectfully requests to sit down with the county to decide on a final allocation between the three cost components, based on the county’s interpretation of the individual cost elements,” MV answered. “Then the final amounts written into the contract would be binding to MV for the contract term.”

As if this wasn't enough, it also turns out that Abele had designed the bidding process in such a way as to ensure that it was stacked against MTS by asking questions like naming three references for other systems the company ran, but then not following up on the reference. Furthermore, they didn't even do the basic step of interviewing the companies:

“We’ve never had any proposal for any project not have an interview,” Alexander told the Shepherd. “This was a first. And for something of this size, it was really surprising.”

MTS’s attorney Van Schyndle agreed that the absence of interviews was “crazy,” and added that many of the questions in the RFP penalized MTS in favor of a new operator. For example, one question asked for up to three references from cities in which the bidder has operations similar to Milwaukee County’s system. Since MTS only operates in Milwaukee County, it provided just one reference but more than 20 letters of recommendation from local leaders. MTS scored just 41 points for its answer, while MV earned 55 points.

MTS argues that if MV’s references had been checked, the Abele administration would have discovered that MV doesn’t operate any bus systems that are as large as Milwaukee County’s.

“At no point in the record that we received did it show any indication or a memo saying they called references or anything like that,” Van Schyndle said. “That’s crazy to me. I don’t like to throw out words like dereliction of duty, but that is crazy to me.”

As this information came out, MV started to do damage control by trying to persuade public opinion of their company. They sent out postcards announcing open houses across the county and advertising a website to promote their propaganda.

But their claims are about as trustworthy as Abele's bidding process.

They claim to "understand the importance of unions, have worked closely with unions and want to retain workers.  However, as I had pointed out months ago, their track record with the unions is really not good at all and had led to a number of strikes around the nation:

MV Transportation has acted as if they will be glad to take on the current drivers of ATU 998 and honor their contract, which was just entered last month. 

Their track record shows that this is anything but the reality of how they operate.

A quick Google search shows a history of labor struggles in almost every community they have been involved, including Reno, Santa Clarita, New York City and Chicago.  In Fairfield, California, MV Transportation refused to pay their drivers for hours worked, prompting a federal law suit.

MV also claims that they don't want to make a profit off this contract and that they would reinvest the money into the community. Likewise, they will tell anyone who would listen that they are all about service.

Again, this is just a corporate snow job.

In Fairfield, California, MV was fined nearly 300 times for failing to provide proper service or properly maintaining the buses.  MV's response to the fines was very telling on who they really are:

MV executives were furious about the fines. In meetings with the FAST staff, they complained they were “losing money” and the deal they signed was too punitive, according to meeting notes and internal memos.

As the friction between Fink and the company peaked in the summer of 2009, Monson, then MV’s board chairman, made $10,000 campaign donations to City Councilman John Mraz and City Councilwoman Catherine Moy. Those were hefty sums, even in a city with no campaign contribution limits. When contacted for comment, Mraz called Fink an expletive and hung up the phone. Moy did not return emails or phone calls.

As the gentle reader can plainly see, their only interest was their profits and that they were willing to buy off the local politicians to make their problems go away.

Another example comes from Lake County, Florida, where they did an audit of MV's operation there. Overall, it was a pretty damning report, finding a lot of major flaws and inefficiencies.  But the most disconcerting one was that MV was caught cooking the books to increase their profit margin:

Management routinely manipulates completed trip data to maximize revenues from funding sources.
When trips are scheduled, the system assigns the funding source for the trip based on the code
assigned by staff. However, after the close of the month, Division staff orders the Contractor to
change some of the funding sources. For example, for the month of May 2012, the funding sources
for 4,308 out of 11,416 trips, nearly 38% were altered. For this month, the total funding billed was
$210,510.

Perhaps the best summary of MV's style of operation comes from the article regarding Fairfield:

Fink now works at the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission in Stockton. Reflecting back on his time in Fairfield, he said it taught him a lesson about outsourcing public transit.

“If you had a contractor that wanted to run the business and not maximize their profit at every turn, then it would be fine,” Fink said. “As it tends to work out, you’re spending 85 percent of the time making sure that they’re doing everything in the contract instead of doing the things you need to be doing, like getting grant money doing transit planning.”

To recap, Abele gets caught screwing up again. Instead of taking responsibility for his mistake, he scapegoats MTS and vows to punish them. He does so through the use of apparent bid rigging to give the contract to a for profit company with a very bad reputation.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

The County Board's Administrative Review Committee is set to hear the complaints of MTS And Veolia regarding the bidding process on Tuesday, to determine if the bidding process was conducted appropriately.
The committee could find that the bidding was done fairly or that it wasn't and order that the bids be rescored or that the whole bidding process be done over with.

The committee should find that the bidding process was in error due to the obvious favoritism and manipulation of the process.

If the bidding process should be upheld for some inexplicable reason, the contract should still be rejected due to MV's poor record and dishonest business practices.

Furthermore, this whole thing should be referred to the district attorney's office for investigation into the apparent bid rigging involved with the contract.

ADDENDUM: It appears that Abele is only now asking for feedback regarding what people would like to see in the transit system.  Wouldn't it have behooved him to have done that before doing the bidding process.

*MV stands for Money Vultures.

Wheelin' and Dealin' and Cleanin' Up

In the past couple of days, there has been some very good and very exciting news about the transit system in Milwaukee County.

The first item came Wednesday, when the County Board added an amendment to the county budget that would bring the Milwaukee County Transit System in house:

The move on transit would give Milwaukee Transport Services, the management firm that has run the transit system for 38 years, one last year before the county would move the service in-house, under a budget amendment by Supervisor Theodore Lipscomb Sr.

"We are able to manage General Mitchell Airport; we can certainly manage a transit system," Lipscomb said. "There should be nothing about it that scares people."

The move makes a lot of sense.

It could help reduce costs to the taxpayers and to the riders by giving the county more leverage on benefits such as health care and pensions. It would also save money by not having as much going toward administrative costs by whatever private entity running it.

Bringing the system in house would also give greater certainty to the drivers, mechanics and other employees of the transit system, which would allow room for even greater efficiency.

Despite all of the potential benefits, expect Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele to veto this amendment if it passes the entire board next week. There are two reasons why Abele would oppose such a move.

One reason is that he has already cut a backroom deal with the for profit company MV Transportation, which is based in Texas.  Although because of the sketchy way Abele has handled this, the contract has been suspended indefinitely due to challenges filed by two losing bidders, including the MTS, the company that has been administrating the system for years.  In fact, Abele has bungled the deal so badly that MTS was given a one-year extension on their contract so that the legal issues could be resolved.

The other reason Abele would veto this amendment is because it is contrary to his obvious goal of greatly minimizing - if not completely eliminating - county government.  The last thing Abele wants to do is add another 1,000 employees, even though it would save money and create greater efficiency, things Abele pretends to believe in.

The other big news for transit in Milwaukee County is that the Board has wisely overridden Abele's veto of a resolution which would require him to negotiate an intergovernmental agreement between the county and the City of Milwaukee for the regulation of taxi cabs:

The County Board Thursday overrode a veto by County Executive Chris Abele, setting in motion an effort to have the county take over taxi regulation for the City of Milwaukee and other municipalities.

The vote to override was 14-4, with Supervisors Deanna Alexander, Michael Mayo Sr., Jim "Luigi" Schmitt and Steve F. Taylor voting against the override.

The board initially backed the move to shift cab regulation in September. The effort was prompted by a court decision earlier in the year saying the city's cab regulation was too restrictive and violated the state constitution. The city's ordinance limits the number of cab permits to 321.

Abele gave lip service to actually supporting the idea, but came up with a laundry list of excuses why he vetoed it, including his concern that it might violate state law.

As if.

The only time that Abele worries about following the law is if it benefits him somehow.

As with the transit system, there are two reasons why Abele vetoed this resolution. Again like the transit system, one of Abele's reasons is that he is trying to shut down the county government, he doesn't want to add more services, more staff or more responsibility.

The other reason Abele didn't want to do this is because the move would threaten the monopoly on the county's taxi cab service held by the company run by State Representative Joe Sanfelippo. Sanfelippo is the rabid Teapublican that Abele and his fellow plutocrats at the Greater Milwaukee Committee paid off to be the face of Act 14, the law that concentrated an excessive amount of power in Abele's hands.

The greatest concern about this is that when the negotiations are completed, Abele would show his usual level of incompetence and royally screw things up.  It would taken a year or two after Abele is gone to clean up that mess.

The third bit of good news is not related to transit, but is aimed making things better.  That item is the rejection of a high paying contract for cleaning services:

The board also voted 17-0 to reject a long-languishing $9 million contract to have CleanPower take over all janitorial services for the county. Some supervisors have objected to low pay offered by CleanPower, an issue championed by SEIU, a union attempting to organize janitors.

The firm pays janitors $8.75 an hour to start, according to testimony by employees of the firm.

Abele said he'll work with supervisors to try to negotiate an acceptable cleaning contract with CleanPower.

Supervisor David Bowen said he would like to see the cleaning contracts rebid, with specifications revised to give smaller firms a chance to compete. Cleaning firms not big enough to bid on a combined contract covering all county buildings didn't get a fair shot in the last bidding competition, Bowen said.

For that kind of money, the county could hire their own housekeeping staff and get better service for a lower cost.

But I guess we can't ask them to make too much sense now, can we?

An Open Letter To Chris Abele Regarding The County Transit System

The following letter was presented to the Milwaukee County Board regarding Chris Abele's decision to go with a for-profit transit company to run the Milwaukee County Transit System.  It is published here with the permission of Local 998:

Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele
Milwaukee County Courthouse
901 N. 9th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53233

September 9th, 2013

Dear County Executive Abele:

The people on the front lines of the Milwaukee County Transit System, the workers represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998, have concerns about the process by which a new transit manager was chosen by your administration. There has been a lack of transparency to this process, with no public or worker input involved at all. We are wondering why this is so. You have been invited numerous times to discuss the matter with our membership, and we have yet to hear from you. We would like to remind you that when you sought our endorsement for public office, you gained that endorsement by addressing our concerns in person. We are not any less accessible now than we were then.

We would like to set the record straight on a few points. Our members have said time and again that we want to keep transit locally managed, and that we want to keep it non-profit. It is our feeling that public transportation is as much a part of the infrastructure of this county as any other public service. It is not intended to generate profit. This was one of the best transit systems in the country until shortfalls in state and federal funding forced cuts that harmed the community and our workers. Even with those challenges, the people at Local 998 have taken concession after concession to avoid service interruptions and further inconveniences for our passengers. We have shown up for work consistently through route cuts, fare increases, assaults on personnel, and the like. We have been here for this community. We do not deserve to have decisions affecting our livelihoods made without our input. The riding public does not deserve to have decisions affecting their ability to move around this county made without their input. Yet, this is exactly what has happened.

The members of Local 998 and of the transit riding community are keenly interested in keeping Milwaukee County revenue in Milwaukee County. There is no sense in sending jobs and money out of state at a time when this county is dealing with crippling legislation from Madison. There needs to be more than lip-service given to job creation and job access, and a robust transit system is integral to both issues. Transit riders, concerned advocates, and transit workers are taxpaying citizens who live here, shop here, and support the local economy.

Sit down with us and find more viable solutions than sending our tax dollars to shareholders in Texas.

We want transparency and inclusion to be central to the vendor selection process. This has not been the case thus far. The public and transit workers who serve this community have a right to be involved. We would appreciate it if your administration would talk TO us instead of AROUND us.

Our Union hall is always open, and we are ready for public hearings specific to transit, so the community and workers can help decide what is best for the transit riders of Milwaukee County.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.



Community Partners and the Members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998

I would just point out that this is a pattern for Abele. He has consistently refused to meet with the workers whether it's regarding the transit system, the mental health complex or any other part of the county.

So much for his grandiose talk about wanting to be partners with the workers while he was first running for office.

Milwaukee's New Transit System?

Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele is bound and determined to sell off the county's transit system to a for-profit company of ill repute.  Needless to say, this idea should and must be rejected.

To further prove that, here is a visual showing what our transit system could look like as Abele's Republican buddies laugh their way to the bank:

Vulture Capitalism Versus The Transit Rider

Last month, an Ohio-based company called Developers Diversified Realty told the Milwaukee Transit County System that they had to move three bus stops which were located in the parking lots of property they own.  The reason for this sudden demand was made obvious in the reporting of the news (emphasis mine):

Milwaukee County last month reluctantly removed bus stops from three large area shopping centers at the request of the property manager.

That manager, Ohio-based Developers Diversified Realty, asked that the bus stops be removed and argued buses damage roadways and interfere with the commercial development of the areas, according to a report to the Milwaukee County Board. The request pertained to the Shoppers World of Brookfield on West Capitol Drive, West Allis Center on Highway 100 and Marketplace of Brown Deer on North Green Bay Road.*

Milwaukee County Transit System officials responded to questions about the routes with a printed statement.

“We are disappointed that we had to re-route buses at these locations, causing inconvenience to our customers, especially those with limited mobility,” the statement said. “Over the years, as shopping centers renovate, we have worked diligently to maintain public transit access. Being asked to totally vacate a property is rare, especially at locations where there are hundreds of riders per day benefiting from the service.”

The article goes on to say that MCTS has found a solution at one site due to the cooperation of a Pick'N'Save store allowing the buses to park along the side of their building. They've moved the other two sites to temporary sites while they try to find something more workable.

I am familiar with the West Allis Center.  It is a large strip mall that holds a Dollar Store, Marshall's, Pick'N'Save, Kohl's and a Menard's store.  Along the sidewalk is a BMO Harris Bank; a UW Credit Union which they had just built on the spot where a Blockbusters store stood; a Walgreens pharmacy; and a Panda Express, which had also been built in the last year or two.  They often have a Christmas tree stand there during the holidays as well.

It's fairly obvious that the realtors are looking to maximize their income and profits by kissing the public good good-bye and developing the remaining open spots, including where the buses would lay over.

The problem lies that by moving these bus stops, it's preventing people that are dependent on mass transit from having easy access to the stores in the area.  This not only hurts the people that use the buses, but the businesses that these people would patronize.  And if business drops off, that means even more people will have to take pay cuts and/or lose their jobs.

At least one Milwaukee County elected official, Supervisor Michael Mayo, isn't sitting around.  He issued a press release on Wednesday, condemning these moves:

“Re-routing those buses away from these commercial strips is not only a big inconvenience for all riders, it represents a severe disadvantage for elderly and disabled riders,” Mayo said. “Those with limited mobility will now be forced to travel further to get to their destinations.

“Moving bus routes by even two-tenths of a mile may not seem like much to an able-bodied person, but to a disabled or elderly person it represents a significant handicap.”

Mayo questioned why the manager of the shopping centers, Developers Diversified Realty, removed the stops, saying that it appeared to be a maneuver to keep some people away.

“Those routes carry hundreds of people every day,” Mayo said. “Why would they want to remove those stops when people use them to shop at their stores?”

Mayo praised commercial property owners who work with MTS to make their stores readily accessible to all members of the public.

“Most commercial property owners realize that having a bus route leading to their establishment is a significant advantage for their business,” he said. “I applaud them for knowing that transit is key to our economy, and all customers should have access to their establishments.”

It should be noted that Milwaukee County Emperor had nothing to say about this. Then again, it shouldn't be surprising. He's already shown he doesn't really give a darn about the transit system or who might be harmed if the system isn't being operated correctly.

*It should be noted that I have heard reports that the owner of Southridge Mall is also forcing the bus stops off their property.

MJS Editorial Board Contradicts Itself To Push Corporate Agenda

As I just discussed, Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele is trying to force through a pig in a poke of a transit deal.  The only winner in this deal would be the profiteers in Texas that would drain Milwaukee County's transit system of all its money without providing the services they had promised.

Unsurprisingly, the editorial board at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are supporting this malfeasance, even though they admit that the whole thing stinks.

What is remarkable is that they use logic so circular that they come around a full 360 and contradict themselves.

When they argue why the current company, Milwaukee Transport Services, shouldn't have their contract renewed, they offer this:

MV's critics argue that a non-profit model is better for transit service because no profits are taken out of the system; dollars saved through efficiencies can be plowed back into service. Except that's not quite the case now — the County Board has a say in how to use those savings.

Now look at what they offer has proof that MV Transportation should get the contract:

Abele's spokesman said a contract with MV would hold the company to performance standards on things such as management and routes, and there would be an incentive to exceed those standards. Any savings would be put back into service. 

That sounds promising, and supervisors should approach this potential deal with open minds. 

Do these people even think before they regurgitate Abele's talking points?!  How in the world would it be that the County Board could interfere with any savings from MTS but not MVT?  Things would have to be the same for either company, unless Abele is planning on trying to slip a special clause in their contract.  \

More likely, Abele is once again lying to try to get his way and the corporate media is gobbling it up and spreading it around like gospel truth.

Is it really any wonder that their circulation is dropping, especially when the want to charge $190 per year for this crap?

Abele's Transit Scheme Needs To Be Rejected

In March of this year, Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele had another one of his temper tantrums and fired his Director of Transportation, Frank Busalacchi. Unfortunately, during the time of Abele's tantrum, the Milwaukee Transit System was in the process of negotiations with the paratransit providers.  And because of Abele's tantrum, things got bungled and the taxpayers were put on the hook for nearly $9 million.

To cover up the results of his blundering ways, Abele decided he wanted to get a new agency to manage the transit system, even though the current manager, Milwaukee Transport Services (MTS). To do so, he put the contract for bid, but kept the process of evaluating the bids under wraps with absolutely no transparency or accountability. Abele eventually chose a company named MV Transportation, a national for profit company with a horrible track record.

As I predicted, the secrecy and underhanded nature of Abele's Byzantine bidding process had led to a lawsuit forcing the county to release the information, although that has not been made public yet.

Now we are learning more about this scheme.  In an editorial in Sunday's paper, two former managing directors of the Milwaukee County Transit System are calling out the bad decision making by Abele:

The county's own audit shows that the paratransit contract situation could have been handled more effectively. It also clearly shows that MTS did not act alone and that the transportation department and the county's troubled minority business office share responsibility for the outcome. That's an important point that often gets ignored. Changing management firms will not resolve this situation and is likely to result in expensive lawsuits from the current paratransit providers. It could also jeopardize the long-term integrity of the transit system.

MTS is a local, non-profit corporation that was formed to manage MCTS in 1975 when the county purchased the transit system from its private owners. It has managed MCTS in an exemplary way for 38 years having been at or under budget in all but two of those years and never taking a dollar of profit from Milwaukee County. Seven times, the state of Wisconsin has performed an independent audit of MTS's management services and each time found the company to be a leader in delivering effective service and a high level of cost efficiency. Specifically, MTS managed the system to provide the highest rides per capita, the lowest cost per ride and the lowest percentage of administrative expenses of systems comparable in size.

Despite the emergency paratransit contract situation, MTS has delivered consistently good results in that area too. While Abele is focused on the loss of $8 million in future savings, he's ignoring the bigger picture. MTS, on its own initiative, brought the county cost saving measures that have easily saved nearly $17 million in the last three years. In fact, nearly $5 million was returned to the county last year, most of it in paratransit savings.

So who has been selected to inherit MTS's legacy of excellence? It appears to be MV Transportation of Dallas, Texas, a for-profit organization that has a reputation for over promising and under delivering in a number of communities from California to Virginia.

A little of digging also raises other concerns about MV Transportation.

Their CEO, R. Carter Pate, appears to be only skilled at schmoozing up to politicians and getting fat contracts. His failure to do that also cost him his last job in 2009:

No mention of Mr. Pate, so I reached out to my highly placed contacts. I was told Mr. Pate remains on the Advisory Leadership Team doing “special projects.” He continues, therefore, to receive his huge payout without having to work with clients. The PwC I know does not admit failures and they made a big mistake when they gave the US Advisory Leadership job to Carter Pate last October.

As I mentioned in a blog post at the time, Mr. Pate is a big booster for the Republican Party and worked very hard campaigning for John McCain. Who lost. To Barack Obama. The Democrat.

It may have seemed “logical” at the time to put Mr. Pate in charge of not only reviving PwC’s Advisory (Consulting) practice but to expect him to also turbocharge it with lots of government contracts once Mr. McCain, the Republican, was elected President. When Mr. McCain lost, Mr. Pate lost his ability to dial for Federal government engagement dollars.

Once Mr. Obama was inaugurated, Mr. Pate came up with another brilliant plan to grow business in the Advisory practice. That’s when the rumors of PwC buying BearingPoint, the whole enchilada, started. I reported that strong rumor in early February. By the end of March, PwC had changed course and agreed to buy only BearingPoint’s commercial consulting practice. They left, or rather Mr. Carter left, perhaps via some ineptitude, arrogant boorishness, or lousy negotiation skills, the BearingPoint government consulting business on the table for Deloitte to snatch and grab for a bargain price.

That must have sealed Mr. Pate’s fate. He was out of the ivory tower in time for the new fiscal year that started July 1. When PwC announced on June 16, 2009 that they had completed the purchase of BearingPoint’s North American assets, Mr. Pate’s name was not listed. Joe Duffy is shown as the US Consulting leadership contact. By July 1, Mr. McIlwain was in place.

Pate was also involved with George W. Bush's campaign in 2004.

In a way, this make sense.

 Abele's never been shy about giving money to Teapublicans, no matter how sleazy they are.  And now, just like his hero and mentor, Scott Walker, he's trying to use taxpayer dollars to support his Teapublican friends at the expense of the working class and the poor.

Yet another problem is that Abele has not once spoken to the unions about this.  It's impossible for him to know what's working and what isn't without talking to the people actually doing the work.  But then again, that is his typical management style.  His lack of caring about the reality of things is leading to all the problems at the mental health complex.

In fact, Abele, again imitating his hero and good buddy Scott Walker,  is trying to turn this against the unions already.  One of his supporters/employees had this to say about the possible MV contract:

A lot of people expressing doubts about MV are doing so because MTS has been extremely cozy with the unions for the past 38 years, and they are worried that MV won’t play ball. But, people like you and I who’s primary concern is the best possible transit service should be asking a different set of questions. First and foremost, is this contract being managed by government employees who understand how a privately held for profit company behaves? And, if so, have those people been empowered to do their jobs correctly?

Brandon is correct that MV has the capacity to bring innovation and efficiency to MCTS operations. But it is still up to Milwaukee County employees to make sure that capacity is utilized here.

I don't know about the gentle reader, but it sure seems like Abele and his supporters are getting ready to trash the unions and blame them for MV Transporation's inevitable failure, either with the contract not being approved or later when the company doesn't live up to its fake promises.

Yet another problem is that MV Transportation is touting about how they will save money by buying all our equipment in bulk.  Keep in mind the county just spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new buses, fare boxes and whatnot.  I don't see it being fiscally astute to just hand over self-sufficiency to a third party and then having to rebuild from square one when they fail.  

Along that same line, MV Transportation is looking at our paratransit system like a starving jackal looks at some meat tossed to it.  They would kick hundreds of drivers out of work in order to install their own substandard system.  This could and would lead to at least one class action lawsuit as has happened in other places foolish enough to contract with this company.

This matter is to come before the Milwaukee County Board soon and they need to reject it.

They have not been given sufficient information to make an informed decision on whether this is a good deal, much less the best deal for the county and its taxpayers.  Likewise, the community has not been given sufficient information to give feedback to the supervisors (yes, that is representative governing).

Furthermore, what information that is known about MV Transportation is rather negative and would cause a rational person to be rather leery.  And Abele has yet to even give a valid reason for not giving the contract to MTS, which has been the standard for other transit systems for decades and has returned tens of millions of dollars to the county because of their efficiency.

The Board has had to squash the results of Abele's ineptitude and intemperance before and they should do so again.

Abele's Transit Troubles Mount

Last week, I reported about how Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele fouled up the bidding for the contract to operate the Milwaukee County Transit System.  Long story short:

In summary, Emperor Abele has a tantrum and fires the top four people in DPW, which leads to a bungling of paratransit contracts which could cost taxpayers up to $9 million. To cover up and correct his error, Abele decides to go from a local, nonprofit company with a stellar record to an out of state, for profit company with a long history of screwing over workers, strikes and poor performance.

And Abele thinks that this is a good thing. And he expects the County Board to just approve what he puts in front of them without knowing whether this is the best bid or even if it was done legally. It sure seems to me that the county is being exposed to another costly lawsuit, thanks to Abele.

Lo and behold, the predicted lawsuit has been filed:

The company that runs the Milwaukee County Transit System is suing the county to stop secret contract negotiations with another firm.

Milwaukee Transport Services Inc. is seeking an order requiring the county to give it information on which to base an appeal to the decision to switch management of the local bus system to the Texas-based MV Transportation.

MTS also wants a restraining order to halt county contract talks with MV and give MTS more time to file an appeal.

The article also confirms another point I made last week, which is the reason Abele is playing games with the contract is to keep it all under wraps until he can give the contract to MV Transportation.

Nothing like a complete lack of transparency in government to build faith in it.  And we can't have transparency or integrity because that's not "efficient" enough for Abele.

The worst part is that, thanks to Abele's power grab through Act 14, the County Board isn't going to be able to fix the mess he's making of things.

If they were going to concentrate all that power into the hands of one person - which is never a good idea to begin with - at least they could have done it with a person who knows what the hell they are doing.  Of all the descriptions one could use for Abele, that is not one of them.

Abele Steers The Bus Straight For The Cliff

For nearly 40 years, Milwaukee Transit System (MTS) has been the non-profit agency that has been contracted to run the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS), including the paratransit program.  During that time, MTS has received rewards for their performance and was held as a standard for other mass transit programs around the country.

Due to reductions in federal and state funding as well as poor budgeting by former County Executive Scott Walker, MCTS has seen fare hikes and more than 20% cut in services over the past ten years.  To address the dwindling funding, there was a referendum in the fall of 2008 on whether there should be a 1% sales tax dedicated to the transit system, the parks system and the emergency medical system..

Despite Walker's vehement opposition to the sales tax, the referendum passed.  Unfortunately, then Governor Jim Doyle and his fellow Democrats couldn't get their act together to follow the will of the people and the dedicated funding source did not come to be.

It doesn't look like the dedicated funding source will come to be any time soon either. Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele has expressed that he is opposed to any such sales tax.  (Although he is all for one to build a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks.  Yes, Abele things poor people don't need ways to work, but he is willing to spend our tax money on a multimillion dollar arena for a team of multimillionaire players on a team owned by a multimillionaire so that Abele, a multimillionaire himself, can watch the games.  Do you think he might be just a tad out of touch with the people?)

In March 2013, it was reported that the county would be on the hook for nearly $9 million due to a clerical error regarding the bidding process for the paratransit services.  Abele immediately blamed MTS and said that the was going to put their contract out for bid as well.  What Abele didn't want people to know is that MTS has a pretty solid paper trail of all the attempts to contact Abele's staff about this pending issue.  Unfortunately for all involved, the staff that MTS was trying to contact, including DPW Director Frank Busalacchi, were busy being fired by Abele in the midst of one of his frequent temper tantrums.

It is fairly apparent that Abele wanted to make sure that MTS did not get the contract, so that they could renegotiate the paratransit contracts and cut the cost of his temper tantrum.

On Monday - in a story broken by Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express - we learned that MTS, despite their decades of excellence, did not get the contract.  Instead, Abele announced that the contract was going to MV Transportation, a for profit company based in Dallas, Texas.

As one might expect from anything Abele does, there are problems with both the procedure that he used to chose the company as well as with the company itself.

When the county sends out a request for proposals (RFP), it usually consists of sending out a scope of what they are looking for and companies send in proposals for the job, quoting a price that they want to do the work.  The county then weighs the proposals on cost, reputation of the company, etc.  Once a decision is made, the information is given to the board, along with the other proposals, is offered to the Board who screens it again and approves the deal.  Once the county executive signs it, the contract is set.

Under Abele's screwed up plan, the county told the companies how much they had to spend and asked the companies to submit proposals on what they could do for that much money.  These proposals were supposedly reviewed by a "panel of experts in the industry" that are independent of the County Emperor's office.  But no one knows who these experts are and their identities are being kept secret, as are the other proposals.  Something tells me that those "experts" came from the Greater Milwaukee Committee and/or the Public Policy Forum.

It is only now that Abele is trying to strike a contract with MV Transportation.

During the negotiations, they are keeping the whole bidding process under wraps so that the public can't know if it is a legitimate deal or another one of Abele's sketchy stunts.  By using this method, Abele has put the county over a barrel.  If the contract talks fall through, the other bidders are not going to be interested in getting involved with such shadiness.  So now Abele managed to put MV Transportation with the power in the negotiations.

MV Transportation has acted as if they will be glad to take on the current drivers of ATU 998 and honor their contract, which was just entered last month.

Their track record shows that this is anything but the reality of how they operate.

A quick Google search shows a history of labor struggles in almost every community they have been involved, including Reno, Santa Clarita, New York City and Chicago.  In Fairfield, California, MV Transportation refused to pay their drivers for hours worked, prompting a federal law suit.

It's not only Labor who has had issues with MV Transportation.

In Fairfield, the city officials had to fine the company hundreds of times because they failed so miserably:

Between 2008 and 2010, the company was fined 295 times by local transit officials for poor performance, including too many accidents, missed bus runs and late buses.

The use of private contractors has grown dramatically in California. Contractors ran 223 million miles of bus and train service in the state in 2011, a 42 percent increase in a decade, according to the National Transit Database. Last year, they picked up 166 million riders in California, up 29 percent. Government-run public transit systems still carried far more riders last year with 1.2 billion, a slight dip from a decade ago.

The article goes on to describe not only labor struggles, but poor performance with buses running late, buses not making stops at all, and unsafe driving. The article also notes that they have a high rate of accidents including one fatal accident when the bus driver failed to yield the right away.

The article also reports that there has been a lot of pay for play and alleges that MV Transportation has tried to influence local elections, then going straight to those elected officials to complain about getting fined instead of through the proper channels. This kind of manipulation and corruption is what probably appealed most to Abele. He recognized a common soul in their method of operation.

Most telling is this part of the article, a sentiment shared by Milwaukee County SupervisorJohn Weishan on numerous occasions:

“If you had a contractor that wanted to run the business and not maximize their profit at every turn, then it would be fine,” Fink said. “As it tends to work out, you’re spending 85 percent of the time making sure that they’re doing everything in the contract instead of doing the things you need to be doing, like getting grant money doing transit planning.”

In summary, Emperor Abele has a tantrum and fires the top four people in DPW, which leads to a bungling of paratransit contracts which could cost taxpayers up to $9 million. To cover up and correct his error, Abele decides to go from a local, nonprofit company with a stellar record to an out of state, for profit company with a long history of screwing over workers, strikes and poor performance.

And Abele thinks that this is a good thing. And he expects the County Board to just approve what he puts in front of them without knowing whether this is the best bid or even if it was done legally. It sure seems to me that the county is being exposed to another costly lawsuit, thanks to Abele.

Gee, isn't it great that the state granted Abele's power grab. Imagine how nuts things would be if we had adults running the county instead of Abele.

Is Abele Preparing To Throw Transit Under The Bus

In a must read article which exemplifies all that is wrong with Act 14, Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express reports on the way Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele is looking at possibly allowing foreign profiteers run the county transit system.

Kaiser explains that Abele is taking RFPs (requests for proposals) on operating the transit system.  Abele is mad at the current operators because he fired the people that were to oversee contracts with the transit operators and this led to $9 million being squandered.

The problem is that not only does the County Board have no input whatsoever on how this multimillion dollar contract should look but they aren't allowed to even know what the other proposals might look like, that the one the Emperor's lackeys are offering is the best one or who are the people deciding which one is best:

Perhaps not surprisingly, Weishan said the supervisors didn’t have a representative on the review committee.

“I have no idea who’s on the review panel,” Weishan said.

Act 14 also changed the board’s oversight of contracts. Contracts over $300,000 such as this one now only require approval by the Finance, Personnel and Audit Committee and the full board. The relevant committees with knowledge of the issues are bypassed.

“This is likely to be heard by the [finance committee], as contracts are heard by this committee, but the goal is to have it ready also for [the transit committee] in September if it is referred to that committee as well,” Conway wrote in his email.

Weishan was concerned that the contract wouldn’t go to the transit committee and supervisors wouldn’t be allowed to amend any agreements.

“I would think that they will just come in and say ‘This is our pick and vote yes or no’ and they will fight tooth and nail so you don’t get to see things side by side and compare them,” Weishan said.

Given the repeated incidents of corruption we have seen in Abele's administration - from his Director of Administration, Pat Farley, falsely accusing former Supervisor Johnny Thomas of bribery to his Corp Counsel, Kimberly Walker, offering to become his secret router so he could avoid open record requests - and the utter lack of transparency, there is absolutely no reason for anyone not to be suspicious of the process.

Fortunately, even though their authority and their ability to provide a system of checks and balances have all but been all but eliminated, the County Board is not without any resources, including the institutional knowledge of just how the County is supposed to work when we don't have an executive with a Napoleon Complex.

That knowledge includes understanding that the government is supposed to work for the corporations or the profiteers:

Weishan said he wouldn’t approve a for-profit transit operator since he doesn’t believe that profits can be wrung out of the cash-strapped system without sacrificing service or hiking fares. He’s concerned that only highly used routes would be kept while less popular routes would be cut to save money and turn a profit.

Fewer MCTS routes would jeopardize paratransit service, especially on the far north and far south sides of the county, he said. Federal law requires paratransit service to be offered within three-quarters of a mile of all bus stops.

Don't expect any of this to change Abele's mind. After all, he doesn't ride the bus. Neither do any of his plutocratic pals in the Greater Milwaukee Committee. And if there is one thing Abele has shown with any consistency is that he doesn't care how it affects the little people.

The Damage From AB 85 Would Go Far Beyond The County Board

By far, the discussion regarding AB 85/SB 95, the Plutocracy Bill, has focused on the Milwaukee County Board.  This makes a certain political sense, since it's always a popular move to give the taxpayers a chance to stick it to the government.

It's also been repeatedly discussed that this is a bit of a red herring, since the

damage will be done long before any referendum gets to the voters.  The pay issue for Milwaukee County Supervisors is a small distraction compared to the other things contained in the bill.

I've already touched base on how the bill would greatly diminish our representative government, taking the citizen's voice away as the power in government is concentrated in the hands of the county executive.

But as Dan Cody had pointed out, there are many other issues facing the county, all of which would be affected by this bill, usually in a very negative manner.  Let's take a look at these issues and how County Executive Chris Abele is looking at "resolving" these issues.

Transit and Parks

Two of these issues, the transit and parks systems, have common problems.  Due to insufficient shared revenue from the state and then County Executive Scott Walker's austerity agenda, these two system usually took the brunt of any cost cutting, since they are not mandated systems.

The fact that the parks have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of untended repairs and maintenance and that that the transit system is on the verge of collapse is not due to mismanagement as it is due to lack of a dedicated funding source.  Even Cody is aware of this fact, since he was an integral member of the Quality of Life Alliance, which had pushed for a 1% dedicated sales tax.

So far, Abele's only effort on the transit system was to join in on what I'm sure was a strongly worded letter to the state asking for some more money, which is fine in the very short run, but completely insufficient as a long term fix.

And the letter is more than he's done for the parks.

Giving him more power won't resolve any of these issues, unless you consider spinning both systems off so that they could fail on their own, as Abele has advocated for, as a solution.

When and if the transit system fails, this will put tens of thousands of people out of work and further damage the local economy.  The parks system will likely end up in a private-public partnership, which has proven to be rather detrimental in New York City.

Mental Health Services

The mental health services in Milwaukee County are a wreck.  This time it's not insufficient funding as much as it was Walker refusing to adequately staff the mental health complex and his putting in the incompetent John Chianelli as its director.  In fact, the horrible conditions at the complex would not have been known if were not for the acts of former Supervisor Lynn De Bruin.

Abele's solution is to close BHD, starting with the two wards that deal with chronically mentally ill patients and severely developmentally delayed adults.  Abele's argument is that this is more cost effective and would allow patients to be close to their families, even though many of them don't have any families to be close to.

While it is a noble goal to move as many people that can safely be placed in the community, the sad fact is not everyone is suitable for the move.  There are insufficient resources that could ensure that some of the people wouldn't end up being a danger to themselves or to others.

Despite this, and ignoring the concerns of the guardians of these individuals, Abele is continuing to proceed with this plan, including looking for placements around the state, as opposed to keeping them close to their families as he touts.  The fact that the county board had to act on Wednesday to address Abele's lapses in this area should alone be enough proof to show what a bad idea this bill is.

Economic Development

As I had just written, economic development has been a major issue for Milwaukee County.  Most, if not all, of the blame can be laid at the feet of the county executive's office due filling this important job with unqualified cronies and campaign workers.

The other complaint that has been made is that the county expects to have land developers and contractors follow prevailing wages and to use a certain percentage of minority contractors.

Abele hasn't said anything about this issue, but given his previous expressions of disdain for unions, it would not require a great leap of faith or logic to presume he would waive those necessities.  And the Plutocracy Bill would give him those powers without the Board being able to call for these economy boosting safeguards.

Cutting these requirements might help sell the land, and would definitely help the land developers bottom line.  But as we have seen across the state, taking money away from the workers in this type of austerity stunt only serves to harm the economy and will cost many more jobs as the economy tanks even further.

Privatization and Austerity

Abele has repeatedly said that he wants to privatize as many services as he can.

However, we have seen that privatization all too often ends up being much more expensive than the public sector would be.  We also seen what a dangerous thing that privatization can be, as evidence by the Milwaukee County child welfare system.  Their most recent failure as cost three children their lives.

Furthermore, just looking at the state numbers for the last two years has shown just what this type of austerity can do.  It has all but stopped job growth in the state.  With the Milwaukee area having an 8.4% unemployment rate, one would have hoped that Abele would have wanted to address this problem at some point in time.  If one had hoped that, one would have been greatly disappointed.

In summary, while the Plutocracy Bill might be aimed at the County Board, it has much greater ramifications for many more than just that small group.  This bill will hurt the voters, especially minority voters; vulnerable citizens; taxpayers; and workers in both the public and private sectors.

But at least the select special interests, like the plutocrats of GMC, will be taken care of.