If Milwaukee County Supervisor Russell Stamper II gets his way, we'll have a modern day chain gang in Milwaukee County filling our massive numbers of potholes.
They ARE bad due to all the snow, ice heaves, and dangerously cold arctic vortices we've had this winter. And Scott Walkers budgets, cutting state revenue sharing and prohibiting municipalities and counties from raising property taxes to make up for the shortfall are contributing to the problem.
Cities, towns, and counties have had to make up for the shortfalls on the backs of their public employees (it helps that they don't have unions to protect them any more) by taking back a good sized chunk of their salaries to pay for benefits, limiting or freezing any wage increases, and not filling open positions so existing workers have even more to do. That means less money to repair the streets and that lack of basic maintenance along with a tough winter means the roads are beyond bad.
So here comes a bright idea on how to fix the potholes without paying out a dime:
Stamper (currently a Milwaukee County Supervisor), an announced candidate for alderman, is calling for a city-county cooperative program in which work-release inmates from the House of Correction and others sentenced to community service could help patch streets damaged by the severe winter weather.
"When streets are deteriorating, when potholes are present every few feet and when streets become unsafe to travel, it not only affects perceptions of the neighborhood, it affects travel and commerce," Stamper said.
(information in italics is my addition)
He said the inmates would not be paid for the work but would benefit from the training or fulfilling community service sentencing requirements.
Yeah, free work but "training" would be just like a paycheck. Right?
Yes, this is a tough problem and urban-hater Scott Walker and his band of Not So Merry Men are working as fast as they can to destroy Milwaukee, but using inmates for free labor just like Scott Walker is doing at the State Capitol to replace normally paid state workers isn't the answer.
Of course, the comment section of this article is full of the RW trollery that thinks this is a great way to not only punish and humiliate inmates even more, but save the taxpayers money, too. Win-win for them.
Frankly, it's disgusting to even consider this idea. Let Scott Walker and the GOP, who took the money away from the municipalities in the first place, deal with the results. Let them get the blame for unfixed potholes until they return to sensible budgeting with adequate state shared revenue rather than using those funds ponying up subsidies and untracked loans for political donors and cronies or, their favorite, election year tax cuts (that benefit the rich, of course).
Of course maintenance funds were always a favorite of Scott Walker who, as Milwaukee County Executive, transferred those funds to other areas. Our buildings simply weren't maintained. Even the O'Donnell Parking structure, where chunks of concrete were falling down and injuring people didn't get serviced - even after a young man was killed by one of those falling concrete chunks (Walker and staff were worried only about political damage to his Gubernatorial campaign according to John Doe documents).
And a fire at the Milwaukee County Courthouse last year was blamed on lack of electrical maintenance, too. Looks like a pattern.
The roads with the heaviest traffic are in urban areas and those are the places Walker and his pals are hammering hard with budget cuts along with a prohibition on raising property taxes to make up the shortfall. It's simply unfair to collect sales taxes (mostly in the cities) and just take the money for the state without sharing a fair amount back.
It's not just the weather. It's the Walker.
Drive slowly and carefully around here. Potholes are always just ahead.
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