City Attorney Race Is Vitally Important

Tearman Spencer and Evan Goyke.

Who knew how dysfunctional the Milwaukee City Attorney’s Office could become?

For 36 years, from 1984 to 2020, Grant Langley had run the office of some 40 attorneys who performed all the legal work for the City of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee School Board and the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee. There had been few problems and Langley typically faced no opponent for reelection.

But in 2019, after speculation the aging politician would retire, and after having raised almost nothing for reelection, Langley belatedly announced he would run, with just $4,782 to spend on the race, compared to his top challenger, private attorney Tearman Spencer, who had raised $103,000.

Spencer won the race and almost as soon as he took office on April 21, 2020, there were problems. By the fall six female employees individually reported allegations regarding Spencer to the city Department of Employee Relations (DER)alleging he posed different questions to men and women during team meetings, favored men over women in assigning work, complimented one woman on her “very nice calves” and engaged in unwelcome physical conduct when he placed his hand on the knee of one woman.

By April 2021, it was clear the office had a big problem with turnover: Spencer had lost two top staffers and 13 employees in all, about one-fifth of his employees (including non-attorneys) in just one year. Spencer blamed this on resistance to a Black person becoming City Attorney, but half of the employees leaving were black. Resignation forms submitted by departing attorneys give reasons from “fleeing the toxic and hostile work environment” to seeking a “better work environment/more stability,” as Urban Milwaukee reported.

In a letter to the other attorneys in the office, assistant city attorney Christian Thomas charged he was pushed by Spencer to write a memo criticizing the attorney he replaced, Naomi Gehling, who wrote a letter to the DER complaining about Spencer. “Mr. Spencer’s request immediately struck me as politically motivated, retaliatory and inappropriate,” Thomas wrote. Ultimately Thomas resigned rather than write the memo.

As the problems in his office mounted Spencer took to blaming the Common Council and the media for the embarrassing controversies. He later did a press conference claiming, while providing no evidence or specifics, that multiple City Hall politicians faced criminal probes.

By May 2022, Spencer had lost 24 attorneys, 60% of his office’s authorized roster, as well as nine of the 24 non-attorney staff members. He faced a harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed by one attorney and within months two more former attorneys filed lawsuits against him, with a fourth filing suit in February 2023.

In November 2023, the Common Council’s Inspector General Ronda Kohlheim recommended that Spencer and deputy attorney Odalo J. Ohiku face criminal and administrative charges for knowingly allowing Ohiku to work on private cases while he was on the clock with the city. The investigation is still ongoing.

And just last week the Common Council approved a $77,500 payout to settle the harassment and discrimination lawsuit against Spencer.

And these are just the high points. At various points Common Council members have expressed amazement at just how screwed up the City Attorney’s Office has become. There is little trust and often disagreement with Spencer over the legal opinions he offers.

Spencer himself seems worried that he has made himself unelectable, and is now referring to himself as “T. Spencer” on yard signs and mailers and on the election ballot, as Dan Bice and Alison Dirr have reported. His opponent, attorney and state state Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee), has accused Spencer of trying to create ballot confusion with City Treasurer Spencer Coggs.

Goyke, in his own mailer, doesn’t mention his opponent or his dysfunctional leadership, which might have been a mistake. Tearman Spencer has run a very quiet reelection campaign (he’s raised very little in campaign contributions) and may be counting on voters not having paid attention to what a disaster the city attorney’s office has become.

Goyke is a highly regarded legislator: one sign of that is he was appointed to the Legislature’s all-important Joint Finance Committee. He has the support of Langley and of many of the former assistant city attorneys who quit due to Spencer’s leadership.

If the last four years have taught us anything, it is how important the City Attorney’s Office is, and how many things can go wrong when you have an aggressively incompetent leader running the show. All elections matter, but this one has tremendous importance for the City of Milwaukee.