Excerpts from recent Wisconsin editorials

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oct. 11

Milwaukee’s violence prevention program needs the steady support that a new sales tax could offer

For years, Oakland, California, had a well-deserved reputation as one of America’s most dangerous cities. It was routinely among the top 10 most violent cities in the nation.

But over a five-year period, Oakland cut homicides by 46% and nonfatal shootings in half, a dramatic turnaround that has received national attention.

Oakland showed that even a city with a long history of violence, difficult police-community relations and turbulent politics could reduce gun violence quickly through smart partnerships between law enforcement and social service agencies using data to get a clear picture of what was happening.

Milwaukee has adopted some of the same violence reduction tactics as Oakland but the city needs to do even more, and it needs to ensure that there is a stable, long-term funding stream for this vital work.

How Oakland does it

Oakland uses a data-driven approach to identify people at the highest risk of gun violence. Weekly shooting reviews help law enforcement understand why a shooting happened, identify the participants and figure out how to follow up.

Police and prosecutors meet with the people who are at the highest risk of being harmed during a “call-in.” It’s done in collaboration with Oakland Unite, a nonprofit that coordinates violence prevention in the city.

The message to potential victims is this: We know you’re at high risk of being shot. We want you to stay healthy and out of prison. We have services and opportunities for you.

Oakland Unite might offer intensive life-coaching, for example, or priority access to housing and employment assistance. The city also has an emergency protection program for people who are in imminent danger.

The results speak for themselves. From 2012 to 2017, homicides fell from 126 to 72 and shootings were down from 556 to 277. While there is likely more than one reason for the drop in violence, Oakland’s proactive violence reduction efforts increasingly are seen as a major factor.

The work is funded by Measure Z, which voters approved in 2014. The real estate/parking tax provides about $25 million a year to fund violence prevention, additional police officers and fire services. About $12 million a year is used to fund police; another $8 million goes for violence prevention.

The measure requires Oakland to maintain a minimum number of sworn police officers. If that doesn’t happen, the city is prohibited from levying the taxes. And that’s a key point: Oakland taxpayers knew exactly what they were getting for their money and had a built-in guarantee that they would get it for the life of the tax or the tax would go away.

What Milwaukee is doing

In Milwaukee, each week police, prosecutors, probation officers, federal agencies and others examine every shooting, looking for patterns. Their findings are shared with nonprofits that can provide supports, such as food, medical insurance and housing. The reviews are funded out of the Police Department’s existing budget. While police have done “call-ins” in the past, they are not doing them currently.

Milwaukee’s Office of Violence Prevention, meantime, operates 414LIFE, which began in November 2018. This public health approach, which draws on the experience in Oakland and other cities, is focused on interrupting conflict before people are killed.

The 414LIFE team has five outreach workers, four “violence interrupters,” a hospital responder and a program director. They mediate arguments, provide mentoring and connect shooting victims to basic resources such as medical insurance, food and housing.

Since it began last November, 414LIFE has intervened in dozens of disputes and helped dozens of shooting victims. The $500,000 program was funded by the city and private donors its first year and will likely attract enough funding to continue for a second.

But this worthy program needs a clear, long-term funding source or it could fade away.

A new county sales tax championed by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other area leaders last month could be that funding stream.

The boost in the tax from 0.5% to 1.5% could bring in an estimated $160 million that would be shared across the county. The Republican-controlled state Legislature must first approve of putting a binding referendum before county taxpayers.

Violence takes a heavy toll on individuals - and on a community. There are tragic consequences for victims but also an enormous cost in dollars. The average cost of a shooting, from treating the victim to holding the assailant accountable, is roughly $1 million, according to the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. A 2015 Journal Sentinel analysis found that one shooting in Milwaukee cost at least $700,557. Taxpayers bear a big share of these costs.

A case study of Oakland’s experience, published in April by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, made a series of recommendations for communities like Milwaukee that are trying to reduce violence.

City leaders must remain “actively involved to ensure the long-term viability of these programs,” the study recommended, and “should make the case that investment in effective violence reduction programs will pay for themselves many times over.”

Milwaukee should stick with 414LIFE and the Milwaukee Police Department must continue its practice, adopted under Chief Alfonso Morales, of treating every shooting as if it were a homicide. We need to find a sustainable way to pay for programs like these that reduce violence and save lives.

Barrett, County Executive Chris Abele and other community leaders should tell taxpayers exactly how they would use the new sales tax revenue - with a portion of the funds earmarked for violence reduction and policing programs with built-in accountability, like those approved by Oakland voters.

Then the Legislature should give local leaders permission to make their pitch for a safer city and county to the citizens through a referendum.

That’s democracy in action and gives the public a chance to directly back programs that will improve lives.

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The Capital Times, Madison, Oct. 16

Think Trump’s cruelty is unique? Meet Robin Vos

Donald Trump confirms on a daily basis that Republicans can be dishonest, dishonorable and, if we’re honest about it, loathsome. But is Trump really the most reprehensible of the political grifters who have taken over the once honorable Republican Party? Sadly, no.

If the measure of true terribleness is cruelty, then Trump has plenty of competition, in Washington and in Wisconsin.

Consider the case of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

Vos serves as speaker not because he or his party is particularly popular in Wisconsin but because he and his allies gerrymandered district lines for Assembly seats so radically that the will of the people is not reflected in the makeup of the chamber.

In 2018, 1,306,878 Wisconsin voters backed Democratic candidates for the Assembly, while 1,103,505 Wisconsin voters backed Vos’ Republicans. If the makeup of the Assembly were roughly reflective of the will of the voters, 53 Assembly seats would be held by Democrats, 45 would be held by Republicans and one might be occupied by an independent.

But the current gerrymandering is so extreme that Vos’ Republican caucus has 63 members, while the Democratic caucus headed by Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, has just 36 seats.

That’s absurd. But not as absurd as what Vos has done with his illegitimate power. A long habit of governing without having to take seriously the will of the people leads to callousness with regard to democratic norms and the basic requirements of civility. This is generally true. Vos, however, has taken things to extremes.

Immediately after the 2018 election, Vos led an effort to disempower the Democrats who had won every statewide post that was on the ballot. The lame-duck power grab made it harder for newly elected Gov. Tony Evers to do his job, even though the voters had turned out former Gov. Scott Walker in order to put Evers in charge. The Vos power grab also undermined the state’s newly elected attorney general, Josh Kaul, who the voters had chosen to serve as the state’s chief law enforcement officer.

But Vos did not stop there. Once the legislative session began, he made it his mission to give state Rep. Jimmy Anderson, D-Fitchburg, a hard time.

Anderson, who uses a wheelchair, is one of hardest working and most engaged members of the Assembly. To ensure that he could fully participate in committee meetings, he asked in January to be allowed to phone into some sessions. He explained that it can be physically difficult for him to get to meetings that begin early in the day. Additionally, he explained that it is not healthy for him to remain in his wheelchair for long periods of time.

What Anderson proposed was accepted practice in other legislative bodies - including the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate. Yet Vos opposed the request, dismissing it as “disruptive.” He accused Anderson of not being serious and charged that the Democratic legislator was engaging in “political grandstanding.” Those remarks stirred an international outcry, and rightly so.

The speaker was trying to present himself as the victim in a dispute with a man who has been paralyzed from the chest down since 2010, when a drunken driver smashed into the vehicle he was in. That accident killed Anderson’s parents and brother. Anderson’s story of rebuilding his life, graduating from law school, starting the nonprofit group Drive Clear, and getting elected to the state Legislature is an inspiring record of perseverance and achievement. Yet Vos had the audacity to criticize Anderson’s public statements about the need to make accommodations for Americans with disabilities. “This is an unfortunate way to communicate,” wrote the speaker in a letter to his colleague. “It calls into question your seriousness.”

Even for Vos, that was a stunning line of attack.

It wasn’t just that Vos was being cruelly dismissive of a reasonable request from a fellow legislator. Vos was sending an ominous signal to people with disabilities who speak up for themselves on the job. The speaker was rejecting the legal and moral intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Vos and his Republican colleagues felt the heat, but resisted acting until last week. But even then, they got it so wrong that Anderson was forced to oppose the reforms he had requested. Initially, Vos tried to attach the provision that permitted calling in to committee meetings to a sweeping set of rule changes that were designed to undermine the governor’s veto power. That scheme crashed and burned when Anderson and others said that would oppose the proposal. Then Vos and the Republicans separated the proposals. But they still refused to address key elements of the request made by Anderson.

It was a grotesque charade.

When it comes to cruelty, Vos really does give Trump a run for his money.

We know Trump operates on a bigger stage and does more harm. We understand how awful he can be. We have watched in horror as the president has deliberately mocked people with disabilities. But Vos has shown he can be just as cruel as Trump. He has used his illegitimate authority - a speakership obtained via the most crooked of all political ploys: gerrymandering - to disrespect and disregard a reasonable request from a legislator who has overcome tremendous adversity.

There is plenty of shame to go around in today’s Republican Party. But don’t lie to yourself and imagine that Trump is always and inevitably the worst of the lot. When he puts his mind to it, Robin Vos can be every bit as shameful as his president.

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The Janesville Gazette, Oct. 17

Conspiracy theorists miss their chance

Maybe the conspiracy theorists left town.

Maybe they’re too focused on the “deep state” infiltrating the CIA and FBI to notice the small potatoes at Janesville City Hall.

Well, they missed their chance Monday night when the city council adopted a resolution authorizing Janesville to become a (gulp!) Green Tier city. There was no discussion about it. Not a peep from council members, while the only person to mention the resolution during the public comment period spoke in favor of it.

In 2012, the city council rejected this same proposal after people complained the Green Tier program was the spawn of the sinister United Nations Agenda 21. Apparently, former Republican Gov. Scott Walker was also in on the plot because he signed an executive order May 23, 2012, to help the state Department of Natural Resources further develop the program. He praised Green Tier for aiding “voluntary collaboration with businesses to yield environmental and economic gains ….”

The conspiracy goes like this: The Green Tier program is a Trojan horse used by the U.N. to undermine the U.S. Constitution and turn this nation into a socialist state. (What was Walker thinking?) Essentially, everybody living in a Green Tier city will have their cars confiscated and be forced to ride single-speed bicycles, even during the winter.

In 2012, the cranks felt it their duty to warn the city council of the dire consequences. One resident said the Green Tier program would “replace the current charter of the city of Janesville and permanently destroy its sovereignty, beyond recovery.”

Dum, dum, dum, dum-da dum, dum-da dum!

Jim Farrell, a city council member who also sat on the council in 2012, complained back then about the influence of Green Tier detractors. “I think those individuals had too much impact on the process, in my opinion,” Farrell said in 2012.

The routine adoption of the Green Tier designation Monday night is proof Farrell was right. Without any cranks speaking up at the meeting, council members found no reason to oppose the program. Indeed, the council made the item part of its consent agenda, a collection of uncontroversial resolutions such as meeting minutes adopted in a single vote.

Here’s what being a Green Tier city actually means: It will help the city figure out how to reduce the city’s impact on the environment. It will allow the city to work more closely with the DNR on environmental issues, giving the city priority in seeking certain grants and streamlining some parts of the DNR permitting process, according to city documents.

Does that sound like a UN takeover to anyone but a conspiracy theorist?

Monday’s action serves as lesson for politicians of all stripes. The cranks have a right to spew their misguided beliefs at public forums, but politicians have an obligation not to buy their rubbish. Janesville became a Green Tier city Monday, but it should have joined the program seven years ago.