Did you hear the one about how the salamander crossed the road?

The Monkton Conservation Commission announced Thursday that it has won a $150,000 state grant to install at least one, possibly two, culverts under the road so at least some amphibians, reptiles and small mammals can safely pass between uplands southeast of the road and an important swamp northwest of the crossing.

When completed in 2011, the project will be the first wildlife-crossing retrofit of a Vermont highway.

Salamanders are particularly susceptible to becoming roadkill because they winter in upland areas but must reach lowland swamps to spawn in the spring. Often, those two habitats are separated by roads.

My question is … how will the salamanders know to use the culvert?

Itsy, bitsy signs?

In Wisconsin the start of 2010 meant that the deadline for completion of Comprehensive Plans has passed. State law requires that every local government who regulates and issues land use decisions must have a Comprehensive Plan or face legal action by aggrieved citizens. It can get real messy.

Rusk County solved the problem by approving what I refer to as the “Seinfeld Plan.”

The Seinfeld Comprehensive Plan says nothing. It has lots of words, but it says nothing. Pages and and pages of nothing.

Rusk County officials scoured Comprehensive Plans of other jurisdictions looking for language that looked impressive and said nothing. They found it.

Take that State of Wisconsin!

Mission Accomplished.

I have long described myself proudly as a “devout capitalist.”

I opposed the government takeover of GM and Chrysler based on my principles of capitalism.

That government takeover was praised by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.

On Thursday Chavez arrested the owner of the last opposition television station in Venezuela.

I opposed ObamaCare based my principles of capitalism.

The passage of that legislation was praised by Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

I have always like the saying, “You can normally tell if a proposition is right by observing the gang that thinks it is wrong.”

Anyway, count me on the opposite side of political spectrum from Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Always.

We are just a couple of rigged elections away from becoming a third world banana republic and Rahm Emanuel is working on those.

I just love it when the Mayor gets blamed for not removing snow fast enough from the streets.

I remember Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandik losing his primary fight with Jane Byrne over a snowstorm.

So it just tickled me when I read about the problems in Washington.

The competence of Washington officials was again under fire on Wednesday as heavy snow shut the US capital for a third business day, with normal services not expected to resume until at least next week.

Roads, many still covered after the bad weekend weather, were blanketed by another several inches of snow on Wednesday morning as uncleared slush began to freeze over.

Freezing slush… YES!

“Maintaining and improving this essential service should have been a higher priority for the mayor and the city council than building a billion dollar baseball stadium,” said Gigi Ransom, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Washington, referring to a controversial sports complex built in 2008.

Irrelevant arguments… YES!

Karyn Leblanc of Washington’s department of transportation said the city had done a “fantastic” job keeping the fleet running, given the historic snowfall.

Verbal snow-job … YES!

Adrian Fenty, Washington’s mayor, who has come under criticism despite efforts to update the city’s snow removal practices, also defended the district government’s actions, saying it had long used up the $6.2m earmarked for snow removal this season and would apply for federal emergency funds.

Federal emergency funds to remove snow … NO!

What’s wrong with the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly “dating” a lobbyist?

The Oshkosh Northwestern tells us what’s wrong …

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.  People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

Cicero   – 55 BC

Call me old fashioned but I believe city councils should mind their own business.

You know … police, fire, streets, parks, water. The basics. They screw up those issues enough already.

Then there is Berkeley.

The Berkeley, Calif., City Council has voted 8 – 1 to mail coat hangers to 20 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives who voted for the Stupak-Pitts pro-life amendment to the health care reform proposal.  The hangers are meant to symbolize “back-alley” abortions. 
 
Councilman Gordon Wozniak was the one dissenting vote. He told Family News in Focus that he is pro-choice, but he thinks the hangers are extreme. 
 
“We didn’t really ask the citizens whether they thought this was a good idea or an appropriate gesture,” he said.

Intergovernmental Relations class … what do you think?

Mind their own business … or not?

A great discussion is planned for the Intergovernmental Relations Class.  

Dan Thompson, Executive Director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities tells us …

Starting in 2010, a city or village that wants to operate its police department or its fire department more efficiently and save tax dollars will first need to get permission from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue (DOR).

I know it sounds crazy, but I am not making this up. The new requirement is called “maintenance of effort for emergency services.” It appears in Section 79.07 (3) of the Wisconsin statutes. Here is the language:

A county or municipality may decrease the amount it spends for emergency services below its 2009 amount, with the Department of Revenue’s approval, if the decrease in expenditures is a result of operating more efficiently, as determined by the department.

You’re thinking this can’t be true, right?

The State Department of Revenue having control over the cost of local police and fire protection?

How did this happen?

The politics of the new law, however, is perfectly clear. The police officers union and the firefighters union lobbied hard to persuade Gov. Doyle and legislative leaders to include “maintenance of effort for emergency services” in the 2009-11 state budget, signed into law on June 29 as Act 28.

The union goal is to prevent city councils and village boards from reducing the number of police officers and firefighters on the municipal payroll.

Any city council or village board that requests an “efficiency waiver” from DOR should expect a vigorous challenge from the police union and the firefighters union.

I’m still trying to get my arms around this.

The State Department of Revenue having veto power on how much MUST be spent by local government on police and fire protection.

By the time class discusses this maybe we’ll find out this is just a bad nightmare, but I doubt it.

Comments Anyone?

This is a discussion for the Intergovernmental Relations Class. 

The City of Kinston, NC voted last year in a referendum to go the way of non-partisan elections. They no longer want party labels in their local elections.  However, due to a clause in the Voters Right Act of 1965 Kinston needs federal approval before making any changes to their local elections. They were denied by the Justice Department of making this change.  Why?

The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice” – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.

So, we have an unelected bureaucrat in Washington, DC overturning a valid local referendum for the above stated reasons.  (Full background article here.) If I go any further in my description of this issue I am certain to be labeled a racist by someone.

 Comments are always welcome prior to class.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was having a new blog site designed. Well, here it is. I hope you like it. I sure do.

You will notice on the right sidebar, a box which will take you to my new ebook  WHY YOUR CITY COUNCIL MAKES DUMB DECISIONS … AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. It’s free! There is no reason not for anyone to download and read it. Pass it on to friends and family. Post a link on your website or blog.

If prior to reading this ebook you wish to nominate me for the Nobel Prize for Literature you can find that nomination procedure here. 

After reading,  any and all comments would be appreciated.

Consolidation … merger … intergovernmental cooperation … call it what you want sometimes good ideas just ain’t gonna happen. This is one of them.

APPLETON — Even before Len Vander Wyst was hired as Appleton’s next fire chief, Mayor Tim Hanna had hopes of increasing cooperation among Fox Cities fire departments.

But with this week’s hiring of Vander Wyst, a former Appleton firefighter who spearheaded the merger of the Neenah and Menasha fire departments, and served as chief of Neenah-Menasha Fire Rescue for six years, the mayor is dreaming of even bigger things.

“Ultimately what really makes sense down here would be taking the heart of the Fox Cities and making it a fire district, take it off the tax levy and have it paid for in a way that is more closely related to what its purpose is,” he said.

Appleton …   Menesha… Grand Chute … Neenah … Whoa Nellie!

How many partners you think are going to get involved in this merger?

The larger the number of partners involved in a solution to a problem, the less likely the problem will be solved.

This idea is DOA.

It’s not a bad idea, it’s just DOA.

You know it’s bad when Forbes has an article “America’s Fastest Dying Cities”.

How does Forbes define a dying city?

 A dying city faces ” fleeing populations, painful waves of unemployment and barely growing economies.”

Where’s it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities–Detroit and Flint–making the ranking.

The article continues …

So far this decade, 115,000 people have left Cleveland, for other climes. Smaller changes in other regions can be just as painful. Nearly 30,000 people have left Youngstown, Ohio, and they aren’t being replaced by either new babies or new immigrants.

The article does not say how these dying cities can be revived.

I am sure each of these cities has unique problems so there is no universal cure for their ailments. If there is no universal cure then solutions must come from within each individual city. Real local leadership is needed.

What I fear is these cities will wait for ”the cure” to come from Washington.

They will be waiting a long time if they do.

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!

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.

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?