Two Milwaukee County Supervisors Don’t Honor Campaign Pledges to Give Away Salary

Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine is as usual doing some fine reporting about local politics.

In their 2004 races for Milwaukee County Supervisor, Joe Rice and Paul Cesarz promised to give back portions of their salary to the community. The move was meant to advance their position that Milwaukee County Supervisors make too much money for the work they do, and as a form of protest against that, they’d donate substantial amounts of their pay back to community groups.

Turns it out it was simply an empty campaign promise.

But two Milwaukee County supervisors, Joe Rice and Paul Cesarz, ran as reform candidates who promised to give back an exact amount of their salary. Cesarz promised to donate precisely $48,000. Rice promised to give back $149,360. Those promises made them seem like bargains to the voters, and naturally helped them get elected.

Cesarz did not respond to my e-mail question or return a phone call. Rice e-mailed me to say he is now “compensated at the same rate as the rest of the members of the county board of supervisors,” and that he made no promises to give back salary when running for re-election in 2008.

To be honest, there are County Supervisors in Milwaukee that work the bare minimum by showing up for committee meetings and the once a month Board meeting but take home the entire salary.

Those who pay attention know who these Supervisors who play the “three years off, election year on” game are.

They end up giving those Supervisors who do work hard and represent their constituents a bad name, and that’s an unfortunate thing, because those Supervisors who do work their tails off get lumped in with the lazy nuts on the Board of Supervisors.

At the end of the day, it’s up to the constituents of elected officials to hold them to promises made during campaigns. It’s also up to the media to remind those constituents of promises made in the past which have gone unfulfilled, and in that regard, Mr. Murphy is doing a good job although this would have been more relevant information 9 months ago when these two Supervisors were running for re-election.