The Milwaukee Post

June 28, 2013 • Milwaukee Post • 9 OPINION Bail bonds bad idea for state There's only one reason legislative Republicans used the state budget to allow the use of bail bondsmen in Wisconsin. The industry hired a well-connected lobbyist who is throwing a lot of money around. This is how a budget filled with good stuff like a tax cut and end to public employee double dipping has been polluted with a provision that will make it easier for criminals to get out of jail and hurt people. The bounty hunter industry hired Eric Petersen, a talented hired gun with strong connections among Republicans. (The rest of the Capitol lobbying corps ought to try that – treating Republicans with respect rather than the patronization and disdain that oozes off of most of this gang.) Through their trade group, the bondsmen have developed strong ties with an organization of conservative state lawmakers from around the country It's a great plan. . Suck up to Republicans and then get favors from them. The problem is that it is a wretched idea. Posting bond means a crook needs to come up with only 10 percent of the required bail. The bondsman forks over the rest. The result is that a lot more dangerous criminals awaiting trial get let out of jail. In Milwaukee County, there is already a terrible problem of judges and court commissioners setting low bail, allowing thugs to get out of jail and commit more crimes. There have been several instances of wit- ness intimidation where released criminals get out of jail and go after the witnesses scheduled to testify against them. There is not one reason to make it easier for gangbangers, rapists, murders, drug dealers and the others who face high bail to get out of jail. Defenders of the bond industry just lie about this. They say it will make it easier for people with families to get back to their jobs while awaiting trial on minor offenses. That's garbage. People charged with minor offenses have very low bail and don't need bondsmen. The bail industry is there for the scum of the earth, not some poor sap facing his first arrest for pot possession. The one good argument to bring Dog The Bounty Hunter to Wisconsin is that studies have proven crooks who skip out on bail are likelier to be caught by bondsman-hired bounty hunters than by cops and deputies. But even that argument has holes in it. You wouldn't have to catch them if they hadn't bonded out in the first place. Two years ago Governor Walker vetoed the same provision out of the budget. He ought to do it again. The bail bond business is one of the slimiest in America. It exists to allow truly dangerous people to scam the system of legitimate bail and get out of jail without financial risk. There's no other point of having bail bondsmen. They are there to post bail for creeps. We need them here to do that, because ...? And now, a word about victims – the people Republicans ought to care about. Under current law, when a person who posts bail is convicted, the proceeds go into the crime victims' restitution fund. If we allow the bondsmen, the money goes to them, not the crime victims. Ugh. The governor needs to veto this sleaze out of our budget and out of Wisconsin. * * * More hilarity from Milwaukee's invisible mayor, Tom Barrett. The guy who has never done anything in Milwaukee that anyone can name is ripping the state budget, saying it does nothing for Milwaukee. If true, that would make it just like him. But it isn't true. The last two state budgets have bailed Milwaukee out of its own messes. There is no city in the state that has been a bigger beneficiary of the Act 10 union reforms than Milwaukee. They allowed the city to balance its budget and maintain services because Barrett, who ripped Act 10, used it to the fullest extent he could. The new budget does all of the following: It changes boundaries to allow for the construction of what could be the city's most important high-rise building, it gives Milwaukee more state aid per person than New concealed-carry rules in effect By OWEN ROBINSON Now that more than 100,000 Wisconsinites already have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, the permanent rules for the permitting process went into effect on June 1. In putting those rules in place, the attorney general of Wisconsin promptly drew a lawsuit from Wisconsin Carry . When the concealed-carry law was passed in 2011, the Legislature gave the attorney general responsibility for the processing of applications and putting rules in place to govern that process. The attorney general was given several months to get the rules in place, but did not make the deadline for when the law went into effect, so the state has been operating under emergency rules since then. The permanent rules that just went effect have gone beyond the intent of the Legislature according to Wisconsin Carry . In particular, one of the permanent rules mandates that the required training class must have a class ratio of no more than 50 students to one instructor. This is particularly onerous to Wisconsin Carry because they regularly offer free concealed-carry classes with well more than 50 students in a class. There is one minor and one major problem with the class size rule issued by the attorney general. The minor issue is the rule itself. What is so magical about the number 50? Why not 60? Or 20? We have come to expect college courses to be taught by a single instructor to a pit of 200 hungover college students. Why does the 51st student in a concealed carry course render the instruction invalid? Of course there isn't anything special about the number 50. It is an utterly arbitrary number that is passionately supported by many of the for-profit instructors. More classes mean more class fees. But given that tens of thousands of Wisconsinites already have their permits from when there was not a class size requirement, it is difficult to divine any rational basis for the requirement. The arbitrary nature of the classroom size requirement leads us to the major problem with the rule and the heart of Wisconsin Carry's lawsuit. The concealed carry law as passed by the Legislature does not give the attorney general the power to set such an arbitrary rule. He has overstepped his mandate. As Nik Clark, the president of Wisconsin Carry said, "The author of Act 35 specifical, ly included language in the statute that the Department of Justice was not to make any rules to increase restrictions beyond what was written in." A simple reading of the concealed-carry law makes it clear that the Legislature did not intend for the attorney general to put more restrictions around the required training than was in the law. Acceptable training can be accomplished with hunter education, a course by a "national or state organization that certifies firearms instructors," courses available for law enforcement personnel or any course taught by an instructor who is certified by a national or state organization. Current and former members of the military with small arms training can also qualify without any additional training. There is not a class size requirement for hunter safety or military small arms training, so it defies logic that the authors of the law would have intended for the attorney general to place such a restriction on other classes. STANDING UP for MILWAUKEE MARK BELLING virtually any other city in the state, it makes it easier for Milwaukee schools and city government to attract quality teachers and employees by no longer requiring them to live in the city limits, it increases state aid to Barrett's own government, it lowers taxes for every single resident of the city with income, it encourages entrepreneurship in a city where virtually no new businesses are starting and it increases the ability of parents to pay to send their kids to private schools (the awfulness of Milwaukee Public Schools is the biggest single reason people leave the city). This happened in the same legislative session that the power of the County Board From Hell was reduced. This budget does more for Milwaukee than Barrett has accomplished in a do-nothing decade as mayor. (Mark Belling is the host of a daily WISN radio talk show. His column appears weekly in the Milwaukee Post. Send your personal correspondences to Mark Belling at Clear Channel Communications, c/o WISN, 12100 W. Howard Ave., Greenfield, WI 53228). Some – even supporters of concealed carry – may support the class size rule as a prudent measure, but the manner by which the rule was levied should be troubling to all. While this particular rule may be innocuous, the fact that it was made by the attorney general and not by the Legislature is an affront. If we allow this attorney general to usurp the power to create arbitrary rules regarding the concealed-carry permit process, the next attorney general may wield that power differently The next anti. gun-rights liberal who ascends to the office of the attorney general might wield such power to render concealed carry nearly impossible by making the permitting process far too onerous for the average Wisconsinite to overcome. The attorney general should save the taxpayers the cost of a lawsuit and rescind the new rules. The less stringent emergency rules worked just fine for tens of thousands of permit holders. There is no reason to make new applicants jump through more hoops than their predecessors. If the attorney general presses on with the new rules, then the Legislature needs to step in and make its intent known. (Owen Robinson is a West Bend resident. His column appears frequently in The Post.)

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