That is more than three times higher than the compensation Smiley earned in his first year as Summerfest boss, in 2005. Smiley earns about $1 for every ticket sold to Summerfest, Bice noted.

Bice offered a “balanced” assessment of the salary controversy, writing that “Many at City Hall consider Summerfest a joint public-private venture, with the Summerfest staff acting as managers of a valuable piece of city real estate. Summerfest honchos, by contrast, see themselves as running a private nonprofit business.”  Former Summerfest board chairman Dan Minahan told Bice that “The goal was to have Don fairly compensated. Just like other businesses.”

But it’s not a business. As I’ve previously reported, Summerfest is a tax-exempt, city subsidized non-profit that also gets millions of dollars in charitable donations. It was founded and created by the City of Milwaukee, it doesn’t pay a market rate for the 78 acres of prime lakefront land owned by the city that it uses, its facilities (estimated value of $88 million) were mostly financed by the city’s taxpayers, with additional funding coming from charitable donations. And it has used the city’s bonding authority to issue $25 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds.

None of this was addressed in a letter Kellner wrote to board members of Summerfest in response to the Smiley controversy. He writes that Smiley’s compensation was based on “national compensation studies and research,” but has refused to share this information with the press. He says the organization has been transparent, but doesn’t address the fact the publicly appointed members of the board were never consulted about the raises given to Smiley.

As I’ve also reported, Mayor Tom Barrett and his chief of staff Pat Curley had a meeting where they expressed their concerns to Kellner, Minahan and Summerfest board member H. Carl Mueller. According to Curley, Kellner and company agreed that future decisions on Smiley’s compensation must be shared with public appointees to the board and also agreed that the city comptroller could examine the books of Summerfest.

City officials also intend to revisit Summerfest’s lease with the city, and may ask for a greater contribution.They may also revisit a provision in the lease which requires requires Summerfest to “develop and/or promote free or lower admission cost community events” on the Summerfest grounds.

Some members of the city’s Harbor Commission feel little of this has been done by Summerfest, Bice reported. But then, if you think you’re running a business, rather than a tax-exempt, city-subsidized charitable enterprise, why would it be necessary to serve the community with low-cost events?

What continues to amaze in the statements of Kellner, Minahan and Smiley is how tone deaf they seem. If they don’t wake up to the fact that the festival depends on the support of the community, its taxpayers and charitable donors, they might begin to see an erosion of that support.

More striking than that was the attitude of Summerfest officials, who basically suggested this was none of the public’s business. Smiley himself was even more outrageous, sending a pugnacious email to WTMJ radio host Gene Mueller saying “We receive -0- tax dollars and I’m not an elected politician. So……who cares what the Board decides to pay me or anyone else?”

As I noted in my column, Summerfest is a tax-exempt non-profit that is required by federal law to disclose its financial details, including Smiley’s salary.  Summerfest has also benefited from various subsidies from the city, including $25 million in revenue bonds, a lower-than-market price for the 78 acres in city land it uses, and untold millions spent over the years to build the facilities and improve the grounds of Summerfest. In the 1980s alone, the city created a TIF plan that spent $42 million on Summerfest.

Last week Mayor Tom Barrett and his chief of staff Patrick Curley met with three board members of Summerfest: board chair Ted Kellner and board members H. Carl Mueller and Dan Minahan, who is immediate past chairman.

“It was a pretty good meeting,” Curley says. “The mayor was frank about his concerns that his appointment to the board didn’t know about the compensation for Smiley.” (Smiley’s raises, as Bice reported, were passed by a small committee of the 26-member board.)

Barrett made it clear that such information must be shared with the public appointees to the Board. The mayor, Common Council president and Milwaukee County Executive all have appointees to Summerfest’s board of directors.

“They agreed with this,” Curley says. “They also agreed that (City Comptroller) Marty Matson could come in and look at the books.”

That seems like a no-brainer. This isn’t the Kremlin, but a tax-exempt, publicly subsidized non-profit that also gets many millions in charitable donations.

As the comptroller is independently elected, it’s up to Matson if he wants to do a fiscal analysis, but it’s clear the mayor’s office will urge him to do so. The Common Council may also have an opinion as to whether this is needed. “Given the public interest in this issue,” Curley notes, the comptroller should consider taking action.

Curley also says that in the fall, after the festival season is over, board members agreed to a discussion to “revisit the lease” Summerfest has with the city. Sources tell me the mayor is likely to ask for a higher contribution to the city for Summerfest’s use of city land and city subsidized facilities.

Absent the massive raise for Smiley, I suspect city officials might never have asked to revisit the lease.

Perhaps that explains why the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation has named state Sen. Tim Cullen (D-Janesville), its Conservation Legislator of the Year. Cullen earned the honor for “his outstanding efforts on legislation revising Wisconsin’s laws regulating iron mining,” a news story notes.

The irony is that the bill Cullen favored didn’t get passed. This is more an award for his “efforts” than his success.

Meanwhile the May issue of Milwaukee Magazine offers a thoughtful story by Erik Gunn about the clash of cultures in this region of Wisconsin. He notes the high unemployment in Iron County and an average per capita income ($25,500) that is 26 percent below the state average, so more jobs are definitely of interest. He also documents the concerns of residents in the region, including the Bad River Band of American Indians.

No big scoops here, but Gunn does report that the Bad River Band is seeking donations for a lawsuit against the state. And he notes the new  legislation changes state law on mining to say an adverse impact on wetlands is “presumed to be necessary.” Under the old law an adverse impact was “presumed to be unnecessary.”

Why is this important? As an Urban Milwaukee story by Al Gedicks reported, the area in question includes 40 percent of all the wetlands on the Great Lakes, along with four major rivers, which is why this area has been called “Wisconsin’s Everglades.”

The proposed mine, he reported, “would create the largest open pit iron mine in the world, some 4 miles long by 1.5 miles wide and 1000 feet deep. Over a billion tons of waste rock and tailings created during the projected 35-year life of the mine would be dumped at the headwaters of the Bad River watershed where it could leach toxic metals into the largest undeveloped wetland complex in the upper Great Lakes. Seventy-one miles of rivers and intermittent streams flow through the proposed mining area, emptying into the Bad River and then into Lake Superior.”

Geddicks’ story also offers a history of how Indian tribes in Wisconsin have been affected by mining and the broad legal rights they retain, which have been affirmed by court decisions, allowing them to contest any mine that might have adverse impact on their reservation.

As Urban Milwaukee has reported, more than 1,700 county employees have collected a backdrop benefit, with some 255 getting at least $250,000, 40 getting more than $500,000 and three getting more than $1 million. The complete list of backdrops can be found here.

The benefit grows bigger the longer employees work past the date they are eligible for retirement, so the benefit is growing for many current employees on a monthly basis. As a press release by Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele noted, the county has already paid out $200 million for backdrops and could pay another $100 million, but the reform championed by him could reduce the blow, by freezing the backdrop benefit for employees who are eligible to retire and eliminating it for future retirees who are eligible for the benefit.

“I’m disappointed the unions are fighting to save the outrageous backdrop that has cost Milwaukee County taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and has put a strain on our ability to provide critical services,” Abele declared. “Instead of suing to stop this, I invite the unions to work with us to move Milwaukee County forward.”

The backdrop benefit was not created or proposed by unions, but rather was hatched by the Ament administration, as a way to reward veteran employees. Union leaders were amazed, as Wayne Krueger, who negotiated the contract for the union, once told me: “We felt all along, we don’t believe what they’re giving us,” he says. “This is more than we were asking for. We viewed it as a golden parachute for long-term employees. But we weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

If you check our list of backdrops, you’ll find that Krueger retired with a lump sum benefit of $213,250.

Today, only the unions are publicly defending the benefit they never requested. As I’ve reported, they pressured county supervisors to oppose Abele’s plan, but the board eventually agreed to it.

The unions’ stance prompted this observation from Urban Milwaukee reader and union supporter Bill Sweeney:

“Are Unions being mentored by Mitt Romney? Why do they continue to self-destruct? ‘Something is happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Union Leaders?’ Isn’t there anyone in the Union movement that has a lick of common sense and decency? Big business paints union leaders as thugs who are just interested in their own material welfare, and covering up for slackers, deviants etc, and what is the response? “Well it may not be a pretty picture, but it’s OUR picture.”

At a time when working people, people who work at McDonalds and other fast food outlets, people who work in nursing homes and other care facilities, people who work hard for low pay and benefits, there needs to be unions that can represent them and fight the good fight. Union leaders who muscled through the endorsement of Falk for Governor in the recall election and now this, standing up for what? –  retaining entitlement to obscene payouts that never should have happened in the first place. It is pathetic.”

Lit Match. Photo by John Liu.

Dennis Smith has resigned as Gov. Scott Walker’s health secretary shortly after more legal motions were filed in the case of Andew D. Spear, who is charged with the attempted murder of his wife Mary Spear, and who claimed she was having an affair with her old friend Dennis Smith.

Smith was appointed secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services on Jan 3, 2011, and was instrumental in Walker’s efforts to oppose Obamacare.

Smith hired Mary Spear as his department’s chief legal counsel in January 2012 and has known her since they were in grade school in a small town in rural Illinois.

The details of the case were reported in my column back in September and you’ll find copies of the depositions below:

• Affidavit of Andrew D. Spear
• Notice of Motion and Motion to Compel Production of Phone, Text, and E-mail records
• Notice of Motion and Motion to Compel Production of Computer Hard Drives
• Motion for In-camera Inspection

Sheriff David Clarke

Last Friday, Sheriff David Clarke once again triggered a controversy by running a radio ad calling on citizens to arm themselves so they can defend themselves “until we get there.” Personal safety isn’t a spectator sport anymore, and “I need you in the game,” Clarke says.

This morning, Clarke was on CNN defending his ad, and noting that he had to lay off 42 people.

The ad. and Clarke’s reference to layoffs in his department, creates an image of the sheriff as a guy who spends his time combating violent crime perpetrated in neighborhoods and homes. In fact, Clarke and the Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputies he oversees have almost nothing to do with it, as Urban Milwaukee has previously reported.

Office of Justice Assistance statistics for the two-year period of 2009-2010 show there were 106,936 violent and property crimes in the county. The Milwaukee Police Department handled 75 percent of those incidents, and most of the rest were handled by suburban police. The sheriffs handled just 57 crimes, or less than one-fifth of one-percent.

In 2009, the sheriff reported only 19 crimes to the FBI, compared to 41,375 for the Milwaukee police, 3,288 for West Allis police, 1,908 for Wauwatosa and even 242 for the UW-Milwaukee police. That’s right, the UWM campus police handled 12 times more criminals than the Sheriff’s Department.

The main duties of the deputy sheriffs are to staff the Milwaukee County Jail and County Correctional Facility South (formerly House of Correction), handle the courthouse’s system of bailiffs, and patrol the freeways. More armed homeowners wouldn’t provide any help with those duties.

Locally, some big names heaped more praise: “She exuded a passion that you only wish that people that ran departments or interests would have,” former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson declared. “…Always coming up with extraordinarily creative ideas,” added developer Barry Mandel. “The parks will suffer…the community will suffer from the loss,” said a “heartbroken” Michael Cudahy, the retired businessman and philanthropist.

Elsewhere in the media, the treatment of Black has been a little rougher. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice reported that former Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker almost fired Black and made her sign a resignation letter he kept in his desk so he could let her go at any time.

Democrats were equally tough on Black. Members of the Doyle administration told Bice that Black “alienated her staff and circumvented her bosses – sometimes without telling them – to get what she wanted.” Referring to Black’s style under Abele, former DNR Secretary Scott Hasset told Bice, “From what I understand of the situation, it’s a repeat of patterns at the Department of Natural Resources.” Hasset ended up relieving Black of her job as state parks director.

Bice was following up on columns by Urban Milwaukee editor Bruce Murphy who had earlier reported that Black had been dumped as state parks director and demoted to an administrative job whose title “she couldn’t even recall.”

Chris Abele and Sue Black together in happier times.

She was fired by Abele because “she is not a team player” who “whether at the state or the county… would do end runs around the boss to get what she wanted,” Murphy wrote in his second column on the controversy. Murphy noted that for seven straight years, a wary Walker never gave Black a raise, and that after Abele did give her a huge raise, he soon experienced a series of situations where Black undercut him or went to board members or others to countermand his orders.

And a third column by Murphy described how Abele and Black were once “best buddies,” and explained how such friends could have had such a falling out.

That Sue, she certainly makes for good stories.