After former Ald. Michael McGee was hauled away in shackles for taking bribes in exchange for favorable liquor license consideration, members of the Milwaukee Common Council were quick to say that there is no such thing as "aldermanic privilege."

The public was appropriately skeptical of that claim, since the council has mostly deferred to aldermen's wishes when it comes to taverns in their district.

Common Council President Willie Hines was quick to appoint a task force to study how licenses are handled. Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler served as chair.

According to the task force, there are ongoing signs of aldermanic privilege in Milwaukee. In some cases, the task force found that aldermen were delaying bringing licenses to the Licenses Committee up to six months. The task force urged the council to hear all applications within 60 days of submission.

The panel also noted that some aldermen base their objections to a license based a hearsay and suggested that they put their objections in a standard form or letter.

The task force also suggested other ways to keep the local alderman from tampering with the process too much and proposed that more neighbors be notified of a tavern license proposal in order to keep the process more transparent and offer public input.

One odd recommendation was that the council adopt rules of decorum for committee members. Often, perhaps due to the length of the meeting, Licenses Committee members come and go from the table and engage in side conversations while people are testifying -- literally -- to keep their livelihood.

Then there's what some are starting to call "the Zielinski Factor" when it comes to the issue of over-concentration -- another tool aldermen use to deny licenses. The task force recommended that the Common Council come up with written standards when it comes to determining over-concentration.

Right now, it comes down to a matter of aldermen submitting a map of liquor outlets in a given area, saying there are too many outlets. It's usually when the individual alderman doesn't want a tavern to be licensed.

Earlier this year, Zielinski cited over-concentration as a reason to keep a store owner from getting a license to sell beer, only to come back a month later and support a tavern license a block away. This month, he also opposed a license of an existing tavern citing over-concentration. That had his colleagues quite puzzled and they suggested coming up with better rationale to oppose the license.

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Posted by corrina252 on June 19, 2009 at 9:43 p.m. (report)

Since when is it the responsibility of county government to subsidize swimming pools? How many pools are in the park system already 30, 32? Do we really need to subsidize golf courses and pools that only a small percentage of the county population utilizes? And how many times do the liberals/socialists in town have to complain about our "crumbling" park system? What a joke! The parks are fine and so what if the grass gets cut once a week instead of twice a week? Do any of you folks know a county parks employee? This type of work is as close to a mafia no-show job there is. Milwaukee County government has been fleecing the county taxpayer for decades and the only individual to challenge it, Scott Walker, is portrayed as Satan himself by the liberal media in this city.

Posted by corrina252 on June 19, 2009 at 9:34 p.m. (report)

I called Zeilinski to ask why he was against that particular convenience store selling beer and part of his idiotic response was that the building had graffiti on it and that Cafe Central was against it!?! After talking a bit further all I could think about was, for the love of god, are these the types of buffoons running this city?