BadgerPundit

Good News All Around

On what would normally be a slow, snowy Sunday, the Journal Sentinel reports two items of startlingly good news.  First, Good Citizenship nominees Michael Pratt and Supreme Solar Allah will apparently face felony vandalism charges for their efforts to intimidate, harrass, and supress Republican voters in Milwaukee county.  It is a victory for justice that these two prominent Democrats will do time for their criminal attempts to subvert the democratic process.  I wonder if Congresswoman Gwen Moore, Supreme Solar's mother, will bother to express similar outrage over this scandal as she did about the horrendous "injustice" of urban Ohio voters having to wait 10 minute for a ballot.

Secondly, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has announced his intention to run for Wisconsin governor in 2006.  Although young, Walker has proven himself a courageous crusader against excessive government spending, waste, and bureaucracy in Wisconsin's largest county.  He has shown he understands the pressing problems confronting Wisconsin, and demonstrated an admirable willingness to confront public sector unions.  He will be a tireless fighter for tax relief, and is exactly the right man to overcome Doyle's obstructionism on the TABOR issue.  Further, Wisconsin needs a governor from Milwaukee, who understands the particularly critical importance (as WPRI has documented in this excellent report) of restoring the economic vitality of the state's largest city. Getting Walker elected will be a battle, but any political fight worth joining begins with an excellent candidate.

County Supervisors - As numerous and as useful as cockroaches?

BadgerPundit has already noted that Wisconsin in general, and Milwaukee County in particular, are egregiously overgoverned.  Here's proof.  I have take population data from various urban counties throughout the Midwest and the U.S. , and cross referenced it with the number of elected commissioners which comprise the governing body for each county.  The results are summarized in the table below:

As you can see, it doesn't look good for Milwaukee.   I haven't crunched through every county in the U.S., but it is quite possible that Milwaukee county has the lowest population/ supervisor ratio of any urban county in the United States.  What is so special about Milwaukee that the county requires more than 3 times the county supervisors per capita than LA, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis and a host of other larger and smaller cities?

The answer is nothing.  At 19 full-time members, the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors is simply too large (and that is after having been reduced from the even more egregious size of 23 just a few years ago).  To be in line with comparably sized cities in the region, Milwaukee County should have at most 9 supervisors, and could probably make do with 5 or less.

There are costs to having such a large county board: With so many supervisors, it is unclear who is responsible for unpopular policies or failure to restrain county spending.  A smaller board will increase transparency, efficiency and democratic accountability in county affairs.  Thus, Scott Walker's and others' proposals to dramatically shrink the size of the board are an excellent idea.

The final irony is that even though each supervisor, on average, represents fewer than 50,000 residents, each of these self-important potentates demands that they be treated as a full-time county employee.  This brazen cash grab is really without parallel in American municipal governance.  Just so you know, each Milwaukee county supervisor is paid $50,874 per year to spend your money (not to mention the generous county pension and health insurance packages).  Multiply that by 19, and that is nearly $1 million per year in cash compensation alone.  With a smaller board of 5 commissioners, we could pay each commissioner $125,000 a year, attract much higher quality candidates, improve governance, and still save money.

How is your Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors working for you? Well check out these 2004 minutes from the Board personnel committee.  Scott Walker has sensibly proposed that all Supervisors take a 70% pay cut to $17,622 per year - consistent with the view that such a large board only makes sense if the Supervisors are acting in a part time capacity.  Mr. Walker wants this very good question put to the people of Milwaukee County by referendum.  As the minutes show, our elected guardians at the Board of Supervisors are desparate to prevent this from happening.

I wonder why? Don't put up with it any more.  Vote only for County Supervisor candidates who pledge to abolish their own largely useless and redundant offices.

Feingold, Alabama, and Flying Pigs

BadgerPundit had the good fortune to have grown up in the great state of Alabama, a place for which I continue to have an abiding fondness.  Thus, I found this article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to be especially amusing.  The JS article is an exercise in alternative reality wish fulfillment for the antediluvian paleoliberals who still control that paper's editorial policies.  The JS editors suppose that Russ Feingold would be an attractive candidate for national office.  In fact, this Paul Wellstone clone is much too left-wing even for the people of Wisconsin, who for some reason haven't yet wised up to what a loony lefty Russ is.  But I know this much: Russ Feingold will never play in Peoria, much less in Alabama or anywhere else in Red State nation.  The fact that the JS thinks Feingold's sanctimonious condescension  will win him in any friends in central Alabama is droll indeed.  Alabamians are warm and hospitable, and we all hope the Senator enjoyed his golf trip and will return soon.  But the vast majority of the Heart of Dixie, in private, hope that Senator will take his politics and put them where the sun don't shine.