Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Abele: Executiving Is Hard Work

During his time as Milwaukee County Executive, Scott Walker repeatedly showed that he was not up to the task with one blunder after another.

The people had really hoped that the election of Chris Abele would bring some necessary changes to Milwaukee County.  The people had hoped that there would be, for the first time in over a decade, a focus on restoring Milwaukee County to be once again a great place to live, to work and to play.

Sadly, the people were to be sorely disappointed.

Abele turned out to be as much a failure as Walker was - if not more so.

Even though Abele's only been office for two years, he's crammed an incredible amount of failure into that short time.

Not only has he done nothing to restore vital services like the parks and transit system, he's actually tried to cause more harm on top of that which Walker inflicted on Milwaukee County, such as trying to end the Emergency Medical System.

He's also failed in protecting our most vulnerable citizens, even to a greater degree than Walker did (emphasis mine):
Milwaukee County deputies are investigating a reported patient sexual assault by another patient at the county Mental Health Complex, the Sheriff's Department said Tuesday.

The incident happened early Monday, according to the department. No further details were released.

Since 2011, the Sheriff's Department has investigated 19 cases of possible sexual assault. But Paula Lucey, who heads the county's Behavioral Health Division, said in a statement that none of those cases had been confirmed as sex assaults by the Sheriff's Department or the Milwaukee County district attorney.
There have also continued to be many incidents of physical aggression and at least one case of severe self-mutilation. Yet, despite the serious threat that some of the people pose, Abele is continuing to actively pursue his plan to move them into the community, even though there are insufficient resources to keep them or the public safe.

It's not only in the provision of services that Abele is failing miserably.

He is also apparently a very bad boss, as evidenced by the fact that no one wants to work for him.

Of course, the reluctance to work for him stems from his tendency to fire people on a whim, as he did with Sue Black and Frank Busalacchi. Even when Abele does have someone who is willing to work for him, he can't inspire them enough to even get them to move to Milwaukee County to do so.

So now he has at least three major positions unfilled in his cabinet. To fill the Parks Director position, Abele has had to resort to hiring a headhunter firm. But to make matters even worse, he couldn't find a local firm to handle the job and is pumping $23,000 in county taxpayer dollars to Harrisburg, PA to find someone willing to work for him.

Apparently job creation isn't a priority for him either.

One of the few people willing to work for Abele is Patrick Farley, who almost lost his job when it tried to frame former county supervisor Johnny Thomas for bribery. That's sure to help bring good candidates in for all of the openings.

The thing that is truly baffling about this is that despite all these failures, Abele and his colleagues at the Greater Milwaukee Committee are trying to cripple the county board and concentrating even more power in the hands of a person who can't do his job as it is. Well, I suppose it's not really all that baffling. They want an incompetent fool like Abele to have full power so as not to impede their pillaging and profiteering off of the county taxpayers.

Ed Heinzelman at Blogging Blue nailed it on the head with this money quote:
And the fight over the form our future county government will take comes down to power…of the executive branch over the rule making (legislative) board. And what would be the purpose of all that on the part of County Executive Abele and his cohort if the board wasn’t ‘checking’ their own personal agendas?

Indeed, the board might not be perfect, but that is more due a handful of the supervisors as opposed to the board itself.

Likewise, the county is not in the greatest of shape. But for those Abele acolytes who want to lay the blame on the board, they would do best to remember that if it weren't for the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, things would be much, much worse.

10 comments:

  1. If I remember correctly, the election offered the choice between Abele and (R) Jeff Stone. Jim Sullivan, the former (D) Assembly person from Wauwatosa was a candidate in the primary -- I voted for him -- but never got much traction. How'd that happen?

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  2. I voted for Sullivan too. IIRC, Abele just had more money.

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  3. Say what!!!?! Do you mean to suggest that our elections -- and that whole PR process of 'putting a friendly face' on a candidate, before anyone has had a chance to know anything about them -- is seriously flawed?

    I think I just grabbed a bare spark plug wire...

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  4. "Not only has he done nothing to restore vital services like the parks"

    Abele increased the amount of money the Parks department received by 6% in the latest budget. Again, you're throwing around statements as if they're based in any sort of factual reality.

    I'm not looking for a witty retort about something completely unrelated so you can change the subject or a, "Yeah but you lost your race!" either. Just pointing out that you make up a lot of what you write.

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    1. Dan, if you look at Abele's proposed budget and compare it to the adopted budget, you'll see that the evil board actually put more money into the parks than Abele did. They also restored the funding so that County Deputies can protect county parks. But what the board did not do is restore any of the 67 workers Abele laid off.

      Truth is hard to swallow, isn't it?

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    2. Proposed County Exec 2013 property tax levy for parks: 24,423,059.
      2012 actual: 23,066,864.
      2013 adopted: 24,465,028.

      An increase of $1,398,164 million between 2012 and 2013. The Board didn't put that money into the CE's budget, the CE did. I'd very much like to see what you're basing the statement that the Board put more money into the parks last year than Abele did.

      You're trying to say he "didn't do anything to restore vital services like parks". He increased the budget by 6% last year which is clearly documented http://county.milwaukee.gov/FiscalAffairs7904/2013-Recommended-Operating-Bud.htm

      As for the 67 "workers". Learn the difference between an FTE and an employee. If you were paying attention when this happened, you'd know that the 67 fewer FTE's in 2013 was due to a reorganization of classifications of taking seasonal employee's and moving them to classified positions.

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  5. "Abele this! Abele that!"
    the only person with a more unhealthy obsession with Abele then you is David Clarke.and you have an ego almost bigger then Clarkes.thats saying a lot.
    but anyway Dan is correct.
    just cuz you yell "plutocracy!" "power grab!" a bunch of times doesn't make any of the BS you spew true.
    but I guess facts don't matter to liberals.

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    1. Get out of your echo chamber and you'll find a lot of people that don't agree with your attempted tyranny. So sad, too bad.

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    3. "but I guess facts don't matter to liberals."

      Actually they do, did you have some to offer up for discussion? When your little screed is very thin on substance do you know what else matters? Making sure it's scribbled down in a manner that doesn't make it look as if it's an ESL class essay submission. Those little red lines that appear under the words that you type mean that you're doing it wrong. You're welcome.

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