Of the 29 items that County Exec. Walker vetoed and sent back to the Milwaukee County Board yesterday, my Supervisor, Lynne DeBruin, who represents the west side of Milwaukee and eastern parts of Wauwatosa, sided with him on at least 12 of them.

In fact, the roll call of Borkowski, Cesarz, De Bruin, Rice, Sanfelippo, Schmitt voting to support the County Executive became one of the more commonly heard lines of the day. Supervisors Borkowski, Cesarz, Rice, and Sanfelippo are the conservative block of the County Board, it’s troubling to see my own representative on the Board continue to side with the conservative members of the Board and the County Executive.

Case in point: Sup. De Bruin voted against funding for the Community Justice Resource Center. She voted against recreation and exercise equipment for the King and Kosciuszko Community Centers, important community centers for senior citizens. She voted with the conservative block again and again throughout the day. Voting to raise bus fares to the highest in the nation??

It’s unfortunate to be sure to see a representative continue to be so out of touch with their constituents. The 15th district that I live in voted overwhelmingly for Gov. Doyle in 2004 and for Barack Obama in 2008, yet we are represented by someone who votes more like George W. Bush or Mark Green.

I’ve got a few things to follow up about yesterday’s post regarding the County pension backdrop payment to Mr. George Brotz.

When I wrote about this subject yesterday, the point I was making is that the media, right wing blogs & talk show hosts and the County Executive tend to lump all Milwaukee County workers into the same group when taking them to task for these huge pension payoffs.

The goal in doing so is to try to paint all workers as “lazy and overpaid” in their attempts to trash unions. According to their argument, if it weren’t for these darn unions and their massively damaging and over generous pensions, this County wouldn’t be in the financial mess it is.

So every time we hear about the “pension scandal” these days, a lot of people just automatically start up with the anti-union, “if only it weren’t for those fat cat labor pensions” rhetoric.

As I alluded to yesterday, there’s a small problem here.

Mr. Brotz, the latest retiree to be singled out and ridiculed for the $850,000 pension payout he’ll receive, wasn’t a member of any union while employed by Milwaukee County.

I was able to dig through the still terrible Milwaukee County web site and discover that in working for the Sheriff’s office under the title of “Accting Mgr”, Mr. Brotz was a “NR” or non-represented employee as you can see from the screenshot of the Milwaukee County position spreadsheet below.

As a non-union employee of Milwaukee County, he could have signed a waiver any time in the past 6 years to give up his right to take part of his pension in a lump sum. (I’m not trying to pass judgment on Mr. Brotz or ridicule his decision regarding the lump sum payment, I’ll leave that to “watchdogs” at the local paper)

While County Executive Walker may have publicly expressing outrage over Mr. Brotz’s payout, he knows full well that the waiver could have been signed, or Mr. Brotz could have been made to retire at the appropriate time and avoided the large payout.

But Sheriff Clarke and County Exec. Walker did nothing of the sort. Nor are they doing anything now with the number of non-union employee’s of Milwaukee County who are also lining up to collect their fat lump sum payments.

I’d argue that if the Sheriff and County Executive had any serious consideration for the financial future of this County, they’d be sitting down with all of their non-union employees near or past retirement and asking them to either sign the waiver or retire “on time” so we could avoid hearing about more stories of half million dollar payouts in the paper.

But they aren’t taking those steps now, and I doubt they will because these payouts are politically advantageous for them.

Every time another one is reported in the paper, they can drum up the faux outrage and position themselves as the only people who will stand up to these massive payouts that the unions don’t deserve and are bankrupting… etc, etc.. DESPITE the fact as I’ve explained above that these massive pension payouts are to non-union employees.

If the County Executive has the power to limit these lump sum pension payouts and chooses not to, he should be held accountable instead of allowed to place the blame on those who don’t deserve it… and reporters like Mr. Bice of the Journal Sentinel should perhaps spend a little time asking about that then harassing the wife of a recent retiree about the value of their home.

Whenever the local media establishment finds itself in a slow news cycle, it’s good to know we can count on them to dredge up another story about a County worker cashing in for a big pension payout.

It’s a huge drain on the resources of this County to be sure, but of all the people making out through this deal – including the latest, George Brotz who will pull in $850,000 – has anyone else noticed that nearly all of them are administrators in the County?

They’re hardly the “rank and file” workers who are routinely lambasted for being “lazy” or “overpaid” or who commonly get the blame when we talk about the pension problem. In fact County Exec. Walker makes a common point that this needs to be addressed through privatization in spite of the fact that those “rank and file” workers who’s jobs Scott Walker wants to privatize in the name of “savings” are rarely the ones we read about in the paper.

There’s a difference between the pension the maintenance gal who pulls in $40,000 a year will receive and the one the accounting manager who made $75,000 a year will get.

If we really wanted to save money in this County, maybe we should be talking about privatizing the jobs in management that are bleeding us dry, not only those among the rank and file workers.