Julia D’Amato is a classy, tough lady who just isn’t much intimidated by anybody.
She stood up for her kids and for her school, Ronald Reagan High.
Now she’s retired. A huge loss for Milwaukee Public Schools.
Good luck, Julia!
Gov. Scott Walker is suspending funding for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship grant program, according to Jim Rowen at The Political Environment.
Wisconsin just became a place that’s a little worse than it was before.
Nothing against rich guys running for office. After all, they practically own the political system.
Chris Abele, though, simply does not have his act together. Yesterday I got an big Abele campaign ad boasting that Chris would rescue the county by freezing the budget of the county executive’s office and cutting back on county cell phones.
Golly. Won’t that accomplish a lot! Those pennies, combined with several hundred million dollars more, and the county’s problems will be solved!
Today the JS reported that Abele hasn’t paid state income tax for at least four years (note to paper: invoking Uncle Sam when discussing state taxes is a federalism error).
The Abele campaign sounds absolutely lame trying to explain it away:
“Chris Abele has paid the taxes he’s owed,” said Abele campaign aide Brandon Lorenz, who confirmed that the candidate also had no federal tax liability last year.
Lorenz noted that Abele, the son of a co-founder of the medical equipment company Boston Scientific, draws no regular salary from his family foundation, makes significant personal donations to charity and pays a five-figure property tax bill.
So just what is the Argosy Foundation’s compensation structure for Abele? That “no regular salary” statement does not rule out a hefty paycheck in some tax-avoiding form or another.
Lorenz goes on to make matters worse by making clear just what a fancy schmancy house Abele calls home:
As for Abele, his campaign staffer emphasized that the first-time candidate paid more than $64,000 in property taxes last year.
Abele bought his N. Lake Drive digs for $2.6 million in 2005, according to the paper.
The decision is finally made: Jim Sullivan for county executive.
The Green Bay Packers’ victory in the Super Bowl yesterday won’t change most of our lives one little whit.
But watching a poor excuse for a human being like Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger get the snot kicked out of him is very, very satisfying.
Go, Pack.
Now, what to do until the pitchers and catchers report?
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District is dropping its plan to hand many area homeowners multi-thousand dollar repair bills in the middle of a recession.
As one of those homeowners…whew.
MMSD’s intent was good. It wants to keep storm water out of sanitary sewers. But the decision of its commissioners to force homeowners to install sump pumps, disconnect foundation drains and repair laterals seemed to come out of nowhere really fast without much thought of the real-world impact on said homeowners.
Hey: guys and gals on the commission — there’s an unemployment problem out here. A lot of people have taken pay cuts or had their pay frozen. Inflation is heating up and, finally, many of us just didn’t budget for MMSD to deliver that kind of bill.
MMSD now is considering a voluntary approach that would help willing homeowners fund the kinds of repairs MMSD originally was going to require. Mandates may be necessary down the line, but this is the right way to go for now.