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The reason for time limits at Council Meetings.

Remember the “Good Old Days?”

Back when a City Council allowed legal private business to operate within their city limits without interference?

Hard to remember back then, isn’t it?

Now we have this …

A proposal to expand a liquor license to allow an outdoor beer garden at an Eau Claire tavern went up in smoke Tuesday.

The Eau Claire City Council voted to postpone the request by the Elbow Room, 679 Wisconsin St., because of concerns that allowing alcohol in an outdoor recreation area outside the bar would increase noise complaints there.

Tavern operators made the request in part to allow customers a designated smoking area. Smoking is not allowed in Eau Claire taverns or other indoor public places.

In a letter to the council, tavern manager David Husby stated he had spoken with bar neighbors and said they were OK with the proposal. But Councilman Andrew Werthmann said he spoke with neighbors who objected to the plan and hadn’t been contacted by Husby.

One of those neighbors, Dan Robinson, who operates the Inn Towne Hotel, 678 Wisconsin St., said he fears already numerous noise issues will increase if alcohol is allowed outside the bar.

“All around the Elbow Room there are families … this would be a step backward,” he said.

The council directed Husby to talk with more neighbors before it reconsiders the measure.

The Eau Claire City Council wants previously legal doors to close forever. They won’t be satisfied until they accomplish it. It is a power trip plain and simple.

Ah, remember the good old days.

It is summertime. That means one thing. Politicos are playing Scramble golf.

If you know golf, you know what I mean. If you don’t play golf I’m not going to try to explain it in a blog post.

Anyway, I played Scramble yesterday. None of us were really good golfers, but we all knew our way around a course.

We shot 11 under on a Golf Digest 4 1/2 star course!

We had 8 birdies in a row!

I smiled all the way home and woke up with one this morning.

Eight birdies in a row.

Wow!

I attended my 40th Class Reunion this weekend. 

What I was surprised to find, is the number of classmates who don’t like their job. Really don’t like their jobs.

Some of the “retired” classmates are unfulfilled in retirement.

I feel guilty for loving what I do.

On second thought, no I don’t.

I have finally firmed up my position on the whole National Health Care issue.

I have always believed the system is broke. Costs are not justified by normal market conditions.  I have no idea what the best solution is. I’m open to ideas. I really am. All ideas.

But, I will not support any plan passed by Congress which exempts them from the same system I have to use. 

When they decide on a plan that does not exempt themselves, I’ll go along with it.

But, until then, do nothing.

I think that is fair.

I was at a County Zoning Meeting.

The discussion was centered on if the Zoning and Planning Director should attend the State Convention of Zoning and Planning Directors.

One member said, “I don’t want her going somewhere, learning something new and trying to bring it back here.”

I do not believe that the world should “dummy down” to the lowest of intelligence levels.

Instead, those with the lowest of intelligence should be encouraged to bring themselves up to near normal.

After all, how hard is it to tell the difference between a building named Lindbergh and a building named Humphrey?

By early next year, drivers headed toward Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport will start seeing signs for “Terminal 1″ and “Terminal 2.”

After weeks of debate and a flurry of criticism from the public, the Metropolitan Airports Commission voted 10-3 on Monday to replace the existing “Lindbergh” and “Humphrey” terminal signs.

You read it right. The local government authority called the Metropolitan Airports Commission is taking the historic Minnesota names of Charles Lindbergh and Hubert Humphrey and replacing them with Terminal 1 and Terminal 2.

Why?

Airport staff earlier estimated that 30,000 fliers a year find themselves at the wrong terminal.

One speaker Monday pointed out that that’s less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the 16 million who pass through the airport each year.

Now, if someone gets mixed up between Lindbergh and Humphrey, I bet they could  get mixed up between 1 and 2?

Just think  … 2/10 of 1% … the names Lindbergh and Humphrey are gone.

Doesn’t sound right to me.

Every state legislature runs roughshod over local officials.

Unfunded mandates, laws to enforce and sometimes just meddling in general.

Recently the State of Wisconsin went above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to meddling in general.

It was a small item tucked into a budget bill filled with similar small items that shouldn’t have been there.

But the controversy that erupted around it showed one more thing that’s wrong with how the state Legislature operates — one more thing that needs to change.

The provision allowed “a federally recognized American Indian tribe in this state having a reservation … encompassing not less than 60,000 acres nor more than 70,000 acres or any business entity that is wholly owned and operated by such a tribe” to get a Class B beer or liquor license from the state instead of from its municipality.

It just so happens that the Oneida reservation is about 65,000 acres. That’s one of the tricks the Legislature plays. It doesn’t come out and say, “This only applies to Oneida.” It writes general language that really only applies narrowly.

But there’s a bigger issue here. The Oneida provision caused a stir because the village of Hobart had been in a dispute with the tribe. Oneida owed Hobart $500,000 in taxes and fees, but hadn’t paid. As a result, the village pulled the tribe’s liquor license at the tribe-owned Thornberry Creek Golf Course before the dispute was settled.

Hobart officials had no idea the provision, which took away their leverage with the tribe, was in the budget until it was too late. They’d like to know how it got in the bill. And that’s the problem.

The Legislature has little transparency about who adds provisions to bills, or a host of other actions lawmakers can take. They just happen and the public has no idea who’s responsible for it.

In this case, we know it was added in the Senate caucus. But a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker said she didn’t know if Decker was responsible for it. No legislator has stepped forward to say, “I suggested it.”

No surprise there. If there’s any way legislators can avoid taking responsibility for something that might cause them a problem, they’ll take it.

It’s cowardly and it ought to change. Any provision added to a bill and any action taken in the Legislature has to have a sponsor whose name is open to the public, just like any other bill introduced in the Legislature. It’s one more layer of secrecy in the capitol that needs to be pulled away.

Incredible story.

If I were on the Hobart Village Board I would be “smokin’ pissed.”

There is only one explanation … money.

The only question besides who wrote the provision in the budget, is how much were they paid to do so?

Hopefully we will find out some day.

Keep on it Post Crescent!

You may have read about …

Thousands of jumbo flying squid—aggressive 5-foot-long sea monsters with razor-sharp beaks and toothy tentacles—have invaded the shallow waters off San Diego, spooking scuba divers and washing up dead on tourist-packed beaches.

The carnivorous calamari, which can grow up to 100 pounds, came up from the depths last week and swarms of them roughed up unsuspecting divers. Some divers report tentacles enveloping their masks and yanking at their cameras and gear.

I don’t understand what all the commotion is?

If the squid are a problem we solve it like we solve every other problem nowadays.

We just throw money at them.

Did you know there are 511,039 elected officials in the U.S.?

Of those 542 are at the Federal level …  18,828 at the state level …  and a whopping 491,669  at the local level.

Those numbers to me indicate that the foundation of our government is at the local level. The foundation of our government is not based in Washington.  I have always believed that.

I guess I wrong all these years.

Or, at least that is what I am suppose to believe.

I have praised them before and I will praise them again …

The folks at OhMyGov.Com come up with some great stories!

In a move that sounds like it was taken from either the pages of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 or the sands of an elementary school playground, Oregon Democrats tacked on (and later removed) language to a recent bill that would make a “yes” vote on a particular referendum be a vote against adopting the resolution and vice versa. 

I have learned over the years that bad ideas don’t die just once. They keep coming back and coming back and coming back.

If you scratched your head as you read the above language,  what it means is …  This was an attempt to put into law that a particular tax referendum would be worded so that a “No” would mean “Yes” and a” Yes” would mean “No”.

Legislators know there is a large number of voters who vote “No” on every referendum no matter what it is. So, let’s trick them.  It almost worked.

My prediction?

The seeds have been planted. This idea will come back.

Maybe not in Oregon …   but it will be back.

So, no matter where you live watch for it.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have no love for Marshfield Clinic.

They just keep on giving me more reasons all the time not to like them.

Each year, Portage County spends thousands of dollars to prosecute defendants in criminal cases, and $10,000 of that is earmarked to pay for expert witnesses.

That money has typically been used to pay for the sort of specialists who must travel from afar to provide their expert opinion on a specific injury or piece of evidence.

That has changed in the last few years because of the Marshfield Clinic’s practice of charging the Portage County district attorney’s office fees for the testimony of local physicians directly involved in the treatment of crime victims, said Victim Witness Coordinator Carrie Davies.

While out-of-town doctors not involved in the treatment of a crime victim typically charge counties an extra fee, local doctors asked to describe a victim’s injuries and subsequent treatment are often described as “fact” witnesses. Davies said most local health care providers, such as Ministry Health Care, Aspirus and Theda Clark, rarely charge the district attorney’s office separate fees for such testimony, but Marshfield Clinic has made it regular practice.

According to Davies, the Clinic currently charges the county $495 for every hour a physician spends in court, on or off the stand, $495 an hour for a physician to testify by phone, $350 for every hour a physician spends reviewing a file, $350 for every hour Portage County District Attorney Thomas Eagon or one of the assistant district attorneys spends deposing a physician, and $245 for every hour the doctor spends traveling to court. The testimony of a witness with a doctoral degree costs $350 an hour; the testimony of a person with a master’s in social work goes for $245 an hour. The Clinic started charging the county such fees about five years ago, Eagon said.

Now that this story has come out expect more counties to come forward with similar tales.

Not that Marshfield Clinic cares what kind of publicity they get.

The good people over at Oh My Gov scan for local political items that I somehow miss.

They found this gem…

It seems that Mayor Shannon McShurley of Muncie, Indiana, has finally discovered some practical use for those newfangled computers.

The mayor announced that the city fire stations, which had previously been transporting documents to the chief’s office via $1,500-a-pop trips on a fire truck, would soon be investing in some low-cost computer equipment upgrades so they could send their weekly maintenance reports electronically.

Last year, the trucks made 6,066 runs, costing the city $9 million.Talk about an easy line-item to cut from the budget!

“If we are literally delivering every document from a fire station by fire truck, that is not an efficient operation,” said McShurley. 

Incredible huh?

And, you thought your city was behind the times!

I agree that “something needs to be done” about health care. 

 Health care costs are crippling local governments.

It is a constant bargaining chip in wage/benefit negotiations.

Just when I am almost to the point of agreeing to a single payer government system, I am once again reminded how a government run medical system operates in the real world …

These bums are costing you a fortune.

Ricky Alardo, a homeless alcoholic nicknamed Ricky Ricardo, swigs cheap vodka by day at his favorite corner in Washington Heights, then calls an ambulance to chauffeur him to the hospital for a free meal and a warm place to sleep, courtesy of taxpayers who fund his Medicaid benefits.

For a chronic caller like Alardo — who phones 911 four or five times a week — the annual medical bill can be as high as $300,000. Over 13 years, the length of time he has been abusing the emergency room, he has cost the medical system an estimated $3.9 million.

In Midtown, another bum, Robert, has faked emergencies to get food and shelter in ERs about 40 or 50 times in the past three years — and taxpayers pick up his tab, too.

Ricky and Robert are among the dozens of “frequent fliers” who clog the 911 system, tie up city ambulances, crowd emergency rooms and burn through Medicaid money.

Alardo, 53, phones 911 so regularly, medics know which calls are likely his.

“When Ricky passes on, I’ll probably even go to his funeral,” said one medic who works in Washington Heights. “I’ve seen him almost every day for the last 13 years.”

And, absolutely nothing is done about this problem.

I was talking with one of my golf league partners. He is going to be gone for the next two weeks and we need to get a sub. I asked where he was going.

“The Czech Republic”, he replied. He and his wife had hosted a couple different foreign students from the Czech Republic. He was really looking forward to seeing them again and playing tourist. I wish him a great trip and I am sure he will have an absolutely fantastic time.

It did bring back my desire to not go to the Czech Republic, or anywhere in Europe, or Asia, or South America, or …

I’m a U.S.A. kind of guy. I will never see everything I want to see here. I’ve seen quite a bit. I haven’t totally hibernated in NW Wisconsin without escape.

But, the Czech Republic?

Two Weeks?

No thanks.

P. S. In fact, I’m still not positive of trying to visit those last two stragglers …  Alaska and Hawaii.

Sometimes I run across local government items that are just plain wacky. No other way to describe them.

Son of a gun, here is another one…

RACINE — Two aldermen want to offer free land and lower taxes to city, county and school employees, to attract them to the city.

Under their proposed program, City of Racine, Racine County and Racine Unified School District employees could receive a free deed to certain city-owned land if they promise to build a new home and live there for five years. The employees would also pay lower property taxes for their first five years.

So, in addition to the public employee benefit package they receive, they would be offered free land and lower taxes?

Wacky?

Or not?

What did we do before the Internet? 

No really, what did we do before the Internet? 

I am speaking specifically about local government attempting to keep citizens informed.

Now, practically every unit of government has a website and if they don’t they should.

But, how good are those websites? Do they have the information on the websites that the public wants and needs?

Sunshine Online to the rescue! 

The My Government Website project evaluates the information governments post on their websites at the statewide, county, city and school districtlevel. We evaluate websites based on Sunshine Review’s transparency checklist, which checks for basic information such as meeting minutes, budgets, audits, and how to contact elected officials.

This project was recently completed evaluations for all 3,140 counties in the U.S.. Below are the 10 states with most transparent county governments; Arizona ranks highest at 65 percent. The scores reveal that all our communities need more transparency.

This website rates every county in the country as to how informational their website is for their citizens.

Look your county up. See how they are doing.

Happy reading!

I wish I had said it. But, I didn’t.

Chris Rovzar said it.

… sometimes it’s just nice to remember that other places also repeatedly and willfully choose to be governed by clowns.

Who was Chris talking about? 

The choices are many and varied.

Give up?

Marion Barry.

Sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands.

You can’t rely on anyone else to help you.

After a tax increase of 2,153%, that’s right over a 2000% increase on roll your own cigarette tobacco …

Don Carey took matters into his own hands.

Carey, 49, decided in April, when federal taxes on tobacco skyrocketed, to grow his own.

”I thought it was an April Fools’ joke,” he said of the tax increase that sent taxes on roll-your-own tobacco up 2,153 percent.

There is something ”fundamentally wrong about picking on the smokers all the time,” said Carey, whose experiment with growing tobacco comes as President Barack Obama last week signed the strongest anti-smoking bill in history. The measure gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco for the first time.

Carey went on the Internet and found places where he could purchase tobacco seeds.

Within about a week, he had received 40 types of seeds and his life as a tobacco farmer was planted.

Cary admits he has much to learn, but you have to admire his attitude.

Be it the Feds, the State or your Local Government … when the time comes to rise up against the establishment I want someone like Don Carey on my side.

How about you?

Orrin Woodward and myself think alike.

Leaders make a habit of under-promising and over-delivering. The goal is not to satisfy, but amaze your customers.

As a Mayor I under-promised all the time. If a project was scheduled to be complete next week I said two weeks. I especially under-promised when I had little control over when/how something would happen.

And yes, the customers (citizens/taxpayers) were always amazed when there was an over-delivery on my promise.

After all,  how often does any politician over-deliver!

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it – William Penn

I have come across this quote many times over the years. Recently I had it thrown in my face again.

Many quotes I can really relate to and learn from. Then there are quotes like this that are just dribble.

First of all there is never any time when everyone is for or against anything. Politics, religion, I don’t care what you are talking about there is never any issue when there is unanimous consensus. When this was last thrown at me there wasn’t near consensus on the issue. It was directed at my side of the issue by the other side.

Then, if everyone is on the same wavelength, who decides they are wrong? Or right? Or whatever? Or, is this some suppose to be some kind of spiritual thing which nobody agrees on either?

The lesson is if you are going to be using a quote when trying to make a point, make sure it does that.

Can we agree on that, even though if we do we could be wrong?

Yesterday I took my own advice.

On page 12 of Moving Mountains and Molehills Local Politics 101 I encourage the use of  “Thank You.”

Last week my Mayor was instrumental in killing a project which I opposed. He deserved a Thank You.

It is easy to bitch about elected officials when they are doing something we don’t agree with. In order to make those bitches more effective we need to spread “Thank You” around when appropriate.

It’s the little things that count sometimes.