The Milwaukee County Board will hold a vote today to either authorize or kill a study to look into the possibility of providing benefits for domestic partners of Milwaukee County employees.

True to form, my County Supervisor Lynne DeBruin decided to flip flop on the issue and voted against recommending to move forward with the study on Tuesday after originally supporting it. It’s frustrating to be represented by someone who folds under the pressure of a few special interest phone calls instead of doing the right thing for Milwaukee families. If the vote today is to kill the study, there will be a single person to blame for it, and that’s Sup. DeBruin. While some conservatives will praise her for the decision, she’ll lose a lot of support from those on the other side who see this issue as just another that she’s out of touch with the residents of her district about.

Despite the best efforts of those on the Right to brand it as such, this isn’t about economics or cost. It’s about doing the right thing and ending discrimination within Milwaukee.

I imagine a similar debate took place 30 years ago to decide if employees in inter-racial marriages could have their partner covered by family health insurance. Just as today, I can imagine the same short sighted – and frankly, bigoted – people trying to recast the issue as one of economics instead of one of equality.

As others have mentioned, if the County Board and County Executive aren’t willing to give same sex domestic partners the same rights as those in “traditional” marriage, those people should ask that the share of taxes they pay to the County be withheld. If you’re going to treat them differently when they’re on the receiving end of benefits, they should be allowed to be treated differently when they’re asked to pay their fair share of taxes as well.

If you had to name any single talking point for conservative Wisconsin politicians and their fan-boys on TV and radio, it would almost assuredly have to be the one about how “Taxes are out of control” or something similar about Wisconsin and Milwaukee bleeding jobs and business because the taxes here are just “too high!”.

In fact, there was quite a push at the County level over the last six months to make the case that any increase in the County property tax levy would force people into bankruptcy, they’d have to sell their cat to pay the property tax bill, etc. Many of you who read this blog on a regular basis made that point yourself, despite the fact that even a 3-5% increase in the County property tax levy would only raise your property taxes by several cents a day.

So imagine my surprise upon opening my own property tax bill today to see that not only could we keep our cat and stay in Milwaukee, but our property taxes had actually gone DOWN! And they went down by almost $300, a 6.1% decrease! Just imagine how big a deal that would be if my taxes went UP 6.1%? You’d have tea party patriots calling for recalls and refusing to pay their taxes because a 6.1% increase isn’t mentioned in the Constitution and would therefore be infringing upon their “freedoms”.

How could that be I thought? As long as I’ve been living here, I’ve been told by those on TV, in the paper and on the radio that sooner or later, I’d get fed up with high property taxes and just get the heck out of Wisconsin, and to boot, I had only my own liberal self to blame because I wanted a high quality of life, roads without pot holes, and the fire department to pick up the phone if I needed them.

So sarcasm aside, my property taxes went down this year, and I know a lot of other people’s did too. Not everyone, but a lot of folks in Milwaukee County will be paying less in property taxes this year than they did in 2008. In my case, it’s because our property value went down as a result of the continuing slide in the housing market. The point is that despite all the rhetoric and chicken little talk from certain people, property taxes can and do come down, and that not everyone in this County is facing an increase in taxes that will force them to sell their house and move to Arizona.

The contract for recently privatized cleaning operations within several Milwaukee County departments has been awarded to “Mid-American Cleaning Contractors” by County Executive Scott Walker.

“Mid-American Cleaning Contractors” is based in Columbus Ohio, not in Milwaukee County or Wisconsin for that matter. If this sounds familiar, it is. Last summer, Walker caught some heat from local businesses for outsourcing his campaign website to… you guessed it, Ohio!

Never mind all the talk about creating jobs in Wisconsin, which is one of his primary campaign talking points. Twice now Walker has chosen to give work to companies outside Wisconsin instead of awarding the privatized contracts to local companies in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. He may be creating jobs, but they’re in the wrong state.

It’s unfortunate that instead of keeping our tax dollars here in Wisconsin, the County Exec is using the opportunity to help the economy of Ohio instead of the State he’s running for Governor of.

Wisconsin businessman, philanthropist, and community leader Shel Lubar is making news again by advocating for Milwaukee County Government to be “blown up”.

Lubar has a less-nuanced view on the topic: Get rid of county government and turn over the services to the state, cities or new special purpose districts for parks or transit. Lubar is chairman of a Greater Milwaukee Committee task force on county government that recommended the forum study.

Lubar said the county’s ballooning pension and retiree health care costs could force county government to “implode” by 2015 if no changes are made.

“Is this level of recklessness something a citizen should even have to contemplate?” asked Lubar, the founder and chairman of Milwaukee investment firm Lubar & Co. – jsonline.com

I’ve been a strong advocate for some of what Mr. Lubar is getting at. There is a massive amount inefficiency at the local level caused by duplicated services provided by the City and County of Milwaukee. Two separate “Department of Public Works”, overlap between the Sheriff (County) and the police (City), duplication of several programs for health and human services… I could go on.

There’s a lot of blame to go around for the reasons both the City and County of Milwaukee are continually on the cusp of financial calamity, no doubt. But if you listen closely, you can tell who the people are who are willing to fix it and those who are just trying to run out the clock so they’re “taken care of” by the system they helped create.

Yes, the Milwaukee County pension scandal hurt us! But either you’re going to focus on who’s to blame for something that happened eight years ago so you can sound good for the reporters, or you’re going to acknowledge how it impacts us today and work toward solutions.

I’m happy to see Shel is focusing on some solutions, even if terms like “blow it up” may ruffle some feathers. The fact is something needs to be done and it may just be that the people who’ve been in charge for six or eight or twelve years aren’t capable or willing to do it.

UPDATE Sunday 4pm:For those interested, the Barrett for Governor web site is at http://www.barrett4wisconsin.com/ I expect it’s in the process of being expanded as we speak.

So at long last, the months of speculation are over and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett will be officially announcing his candidacy to become the next Governor of Wisconsin around noon today.

Mayor Tom Barrett announces his candidacy for Governor outside his Washington Heights home

First, it should be noted that he and his people have played the past few weeks very well. By stretching out the “am I in or not” meme as long as he has, it’s kept his name in the news across the State, and since it leaked on Thursday that he would announce today, he’s owned the news cycle. That will continue tomorrow as the first and biggest story the residents of Wisconsin will see as they start their week is that Tom Barrett is running.

The one advantage that the GOP front runner Scott Walker has is about a three month head start at building his campaign machine. I expect that the Barrett campaign will spin up pretty quickly though and be caught up with Walkers in a matter of a month or two. While Walker may technically have more money in his campaign account right now (1.1 million is what I last saw), Barrett already has about $900,000 in his own campaign account. The difference is more than a couple hundred thousand dollars. Walker has been tapping campaign donors for over a year to get that $1.1 million in the bank. Barrett has yet to do any fund raising. Expect the checks to start flowing hard and fast towards Barrett as relieved Democrats across the State look to direct their donations to the new front runner.

As for the dynamics of Milwaukee I’ll go back to what I wrote a few weeks ago on that subject and how of any Democratic candidate for Governor, Barrett is the worst scenario for the Walker campaign as it nullifies their “victory by making Milwaukee close” strategy.

The second factor? Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Mayor Barrett is a widely popular politician who has very little baggage and is generally seen as a “good guy” even by those who don’t like his politics. His entry into the race would instantly nullify the Walker “Milwaukee advantage” as Barrett would more than likely outperform previous Democrats like Jim Doyle in Milwaukee County. The narrow margin of a loss in Milwaukee County the Walker campaign had been banking on would turn into a massive margin of victory for someone like Barrett.

Third, Mayor Barrett was also a well liked Congressman who represented some of the Milwaukee suburbs that the Walker campaign had been counting on. In as much as the Walker campaign was counting on those big margins of victory in Wauwatosa and West Allis to offset the vote from the city of Milwaukee to propel his campaign to a win, a candidate Barrett would turn the tables on him and use the same strategy to equalize the race in the suburbs and make Milwaukee County even more of a Democratic stronghold than it has been previously.

Lastly, Barrett has good name ID outside of Milwaukee County helped in no small part by his heroic actions last August when he stepped in to stop a fight and was severely beaten himself while leaving the Wisconsin State Fair. This got a ton of national coverage and made a lot of people stand up and take notice of the Mayor of the largest city in the State.

Personally I’m glad the speculation is over because quite frankly, Wisconsin Democrats dodged a major bullet by not having a top tier candidate to face Walker or Neumann. So the stage for 2010 should be set and all the actors are now in place. I’m personally looking forward to enjoying the show.