The year 2006 will be most remembered politically for the mid-term elections that put Democrats back in power in Congress to attempt their version of righting the listing good ship United States. In Wisconsin it will be recalled as the year a Democrat was re-elected to the statehouse for the first time in some three decades. It didn’t hurt that his opponent was a watered-down version of milquetoast that voters found tough to identify with since he didn’t offer much to identify with in the first place.
But we’re going to leave that pontification for other pundits. We looked for the hidden gems that bring more meaning to the year that was 2006. In brief, here are some winners and losers that got us out of bed in the morning over the past year.
Politician of the Year: "Ethically challenged” will forever be part of Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway’s official title, but given his Teflon-like ability to ignore his foibles in the face of mounting criticism, Holloway either has the constitution of Richard Nixon or he just doesn’t care. The year 2006 saw Holloway at his diabolical best: Threatening to cut off funding of an ethics investigation of himself that totaled 90 counts; removing opponent Joe Rice from the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee after Rice raised questions as to Holloway’s ethical lapses and giving the boot to Judiciary Committee co-chair John Weishan for his role in trying to find out the truth behind Holloway’s dealings.
Holloway entered the year with 90 counts of ethics violations for, among other issues, voting on funding for the former Opportunities Industrialization Center of Greater Milwaukee social services agency while receiving payments from the group at the same time. He forgot to tell the county of his conflict of interest on that one. The chairman also was discovered to be the slumlord of woefully substandard-run residential facilities that received county money to house the mentally ill. He lost that access to loot shortly after his role as slumlord was made public.
The taint got so bad that Holloway was essentially left with just two staunch supporters on the board: the well known, ineffective Elizabeth Coggs-Jones and Michael Mayo (who happened to tap taxpayers for $9,300 to settle a sexual harassment case against him in 2006).
But ever the benevolent chairman, Holloway commissioned individual portraits of himself and his 18 fellow board members to don the Courthouse walls. Of course, his likeness adorning the canvass was largest.
Lost in the Ether: The City of Milwaukee’s much-ballyhooed entry into the wi-fi universe has slowed to a pace more akin to the pony express. The city’s handpicked no-bid choice of the locally-owned Midwest Fiber Network has been mired in financial problems and pie-in-the-sky projections. When the initial deal was supposedly done in January 2006, Brew City internet surfers were promised wireless access to the ‘net by now. After threats by the city to pull the plug on the Midwest Fiber plan due to the company’s intransigence and clear lack of financial resources, the mayor’s office tried to save face by tweaking the deal another time in September. The Common Council also provided some prodding by tell Midwest Fiber the city was going to look elsewhere to get the job done. Now, only a portion of the city is supposed to be wi-fi surfing by now, but the company remains quiet on its progress and it’s anyone’s guess as to where the wireless is at this stage .
Mayor Tom Barrett’s office stood tall when announcing in late 2005 that Milwaukee would be the first large U.S. city to have full wi-fi coverage, despite clouds of questions as to Midwest Fiber’s ability to pull it off. Now we sit looking like rubes trying to re-invent the wheel while the rest of country speeds off in Lamborghinis.
Lack of Initiative: In 2003, corporate Milwaukee, a.k.a. the Greater Milwaukee Committee, announced that the Initiative for a Competitive Milwaukee would be the savior of the Inner City, creating jobs and development for the poorest part of our fair city. But by 2006 and hundreds of thousands of dollars in state and foundation grants later, not much can be pinned down as to what the group has done. An independent study of the group said it "has done nothing to advance economic development in the inner city." There is no longer any paid full-time staff for the Initiative and it has “refocused” itself as more of a property development operation.
Party Down: For the length of his 16-year tenure as Milwaukee’s CEO, John Norquist seemed obsessed with trying to rid the city of its “beer and brat” image. Well, John, it didn’t work. Two recent poll results from national publications are in and Beer Town can claim the tiara for being the country’s “drunkest city” and the first runner-up slot for the country’s best party town. Of course Mayor Tom Barrett can temper those titillating titles with the Time magazine reference of our fair city as “lethal chaos.” The magazine recently reported that “It's as if Milwaukee, Wis., had reverted to a state of lethal chaos. A Special Olympian is killed for his wallet as he waits for a bus. An 11-year-old girl is gang-raped by as many as 19 men. A woman is strangled, her body found burning in a city-owned garbage cart. Twenty-eight people are shot, four fatally, over a holiday weekend.” Bring on the tourists.
Voters' Remorse? Recall elections continue to be a popular way to burn up tax dollars at the ballot box by vocal minorities upset that they didn’t get their way. Sheboygan, Muskego, Hartford and now Milwaukee were some of the more prominent efforts this year. In Hartford, the development of a Wal-Mart was used to attempt two recall elections. Milwaukee hasn’t lost its zest for the recall either, as Ald. Michael McGee Jr. readies to face an unexpected early re-election campaign. And true to McGee form, the recall effort is not without its soap-opera overtones.
McGee challenged organizer Vienna Jordan’s recall signatures by using statements from political operative Joan Hollingsworth, whose loyalty seems to go as far as a paycheck. Hollingsworth now claims she was deceptive while gathering McGee recall signatures for Jordan, but only came forward after Jordan wouldn’t pay what Hollingsworth wanted. Hollingsworth has a track record in that area, having once been generously funded by local Democrats to pick up homeless and take them to City Hall and cast absentee ballots in the 2000 election. The district attorney in now investigating Hollingsworth’s role in the McGee matter.
Jordan’s effort is also being backed by Leon Todd, who likely still has a beef with McGee’s dad, Michael Sr., after McGee the elder exhorted his radio listeners to go after Todd while he was a member of the Milwaukee School Board. Todd’s house was firebombed as a result of McGee’s solicitation of violence.
Mensa Candidate of the Year: Here’s proof that politicians don’t have the highest IQs around. The Milwaukee East Side liberal establishment trolled for months looking for one of their own to take on state Sen. Jeff Plale, a Democrat too conservative for their ideological wisdom. All they could find was former hospital administrator and attorney Donovan Riley, whom they coerced into moving from Oconomowoc to Bay View, so that he could claim he lived in the district he was running to represent. In their haste, however, the libs forgot the usual background check on their guy, leaving it to Riley’s opponents to discover that Riley committed felony voter fraud in 2000 by voting twice in the presidential election. Riley quit the race in shame and has lost his law license as part of a plea deal as well. The charge was reduced to a misdemeanor as part of the plea.
But we’re going to leave that pontification for other pundits. We looked for the hidden gems that bring more meaning to the year that was 2006. In brief, here are some winners and losers that got us out of bed in the morning over the past year.
Politician of the Year: "Ethically challenged” will forever be part of Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway’s official title, but given his Teflon-like ability to ignore his foibles in the face of mounting criticism, Holloway either has the constitution of Richard Nixon or he just doesn’t care. The year 2006 saw Holloway at his diabolical best: Threatening to cut off funding of an ethics investigation of himself that totaled 90 counts; removing opponent Joe Rice from the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee after Rice raised questions as to Holloway’s ethical lapses and giving the boot to Judiciary Committee co-chair John Weishan for his role in trying to find out the truth behind Holloway’s dealings.
Holloway entered the year with 90 counts of ethics violations for, among other issues, voting on funding for the former Opportunities Industrialization Center of Greater Milwaukee social services agency while receiving payments from the group at the same time. He forgot to tell the county of his conflict of interest on that one. The chairman also was discovered to be the slumlord of woefully substandard-run residential facilities that received county money to house the mentally ill. He lost that access to loot shortly after his role as slumlord was made public.
The taint got so bad that Holloway was essentially left with just two staunch supporters on the board: the well known, ineffective Elizabeth Coggs-Jones and Michael Mayo (who happened to tap taxpayers for $9,300 to settle a sexual harassment case against him in 2006).
But ever the benevolent chairman, Holloway commissioned individual portraits of himself and his 18 fellow board members to don the Courthouse walls. Of course, his likeness adorning the canvass was largest.
Lost in the Ether: The City of Milwaukee’s much-ballyhooed entry into the wi-fi universe has slowed to a pace more akin to the pony express. The city’s handpicked no-bid choice of the locally-owned Midwest Fiber Network has been mired in financial problems and pie-in-the-sky projections. When the initial deal was supposedly done in January 2006, Brew City internet surfers were promised wireless access to the ‘net by now. After threats by the city to pull the plug on the Midwest Fiber plan due to the company’s intransigence and clear lack of financial resources, the mayor’s office tried to save face by tweaking the deal another time in September. The Common Council also provided some prodding by tell Midwest Fiber the city was going to look elsewhere to get the job done. Now, only a portion of the city is supposed to be wi-fi surfing by now, but the company remains quiet on its progress and it’s anyone’s guess as to where the wireless is at this stage .
Mayor Tom Barrett’s office stood tall when announcing in late 2005 that Milwaukee would be the first large U.S. city to have full wi-fi coverage, despite clouds of questions as to Midwest Fiber’s ability to pull it off. Now we sit looking like rubes trying to re-invent the wheel while the rest of country speeds off in Lamborghinis.
Lack of Initiative: In 2003, corporate Milwaukee, a.k.a. the Greater Milwaukee Committee, announced that the Initiative for a Competitive Milwaukee would be the savior of the Inner City, creating jobs and development for the poorest part of our fair city. But by 2006 and hundreds of thousands of dollars in state and foundation grants later, not much can be pinned down as to what the group has done. An independent study of the group said it "has done nothing to advance economic development in the inner city." There is no longer any paid full-time staff for the Initiative and it has “refocused” itself as more of a property development operation.
Party Down: For the length of his 16-year tenure as Milwaukee’s CEO, John Norquist seemed obsessed with trying to rid the city of its “beer and brat” image. Well, John, it didn’t work. Two recent poll results from national publications are in and Beer Town can claim the tiara for being the country’s “drunkest city” and the first runner-up slot for the country’s best party town. Of course Mayor Tom Barrett can temper those titillating titles with the Time magazine reference of our fair city as “lethal chaos.” The magazine recently reported that “It's as if Milwaukee, Wis., had reverted to a state of lethal chaos. A Special Olympian is killed for his wallet as he waits for a bus. An 11-year-old girl is gang-raped by as many as 19 men. A woman is strangled, her body found burning in a city-owned garbage cart. Twenty-eight people are shot, four fatally, over a holiday weekend.” Bring on the tourists.
Voters' Remorse? Recall elections continue to be a popular way to burn up tax dollars at the ballot box by vocal minorities upset that they didn’t get their way. Sheboygan, Muskego, Hartford and now Milwaukee were some of the more prominent efforts this year. In Hartford, the development of a Wal-Mart was used to attempt two recall elections. Milwaukee hasn’t lost its zest for the recall either, as Ald. Michael McGee Jr. readies to face an unexpected early re-election campaign. And true to McGee form, the recall effort is not without its soap-opera overtones.
McGee challenged organizer Vienna Jordan’s recall signatures by using statements from political operative Joan Hollingsworth, whose loyalty seems to go as far as a paycheck. Hollingsworth now claims she was deceptive while gathering McGee recall signatures for Jordan, but only came forward after Jordan wouldn’t pay what Hollingsworth wanted. Hollingsworth has a track record in that area, having once been generously funded by local Democrats to pick up homeless and take them to City Hall and cast absentee ballots in the 2000 election. The district attorney in now investigating Hollingsworth’s role in the McGee matter.
Jordan’s effort is also being backed by Leon Todd, who likely still has a beef with McGee’s dad, Michael Sr., after McGee the elder exhorted his radio listeners to go after Todd while he was a member of the Milwaukee School Board. Todd’s house was firebombed as a result of McGee’s solicitation of violence.
Mensa Candidate of the Year: Here’s proof that politicians don’t have the highest IQs around. The Milwaukee East Side liberal establishment trolled for months looking for one of their own to take on state Sen. Jeff Plale, a Democrat too conservative for their ideological wisdom. All they could find was former hospital administrator and attorney Donovan Riley, whom they coerced into moving from Oconomowoc to Bay View, so that he could claim he lived in the district he was running to represent. In their haste, however, the libs forgot the usual background check on their guy, leaving it to Riley’s opponents to discover that Riley committed felony voter fraud in 2000 by voting twice in the presidential election. Riley quit the race in shame and has lost his law license as part of a plea deal as well. The charge was reduced to a misdemeanor as part of the plea.
Doug Hissom has covered local and state politics for 20 years. Over the course of that time he was publisher, editor, news editor, managing editor and senior writer at the Shepherd Express weekly paper in Milwaukee. He also covered education and environmental issues extensively. He ran the UWM Post in the mid-1980s, winning a Society of Professional Journalists award as best non-daily college newspaper.
An avid outdoors person he regularly takes extended paddling trips in the wilderness, preferring the hinterlands of northern Canada and Alaska. After a bet with a bunch of sailors, he paddled across Lake Michigan in a canoe.
He lives in Bay View.
