The Milwaukee Post

December 24, 2015 • Milwaukee County Post • 9 Belling wrong on 'union bosses' tainting Kohler workers' vote To the editor: Even though the United Auto Works union strike against the Kohler Co. has been settled, Mark Belling's Dec. 4 diatribe criticizing the union and the striking work- ers prompts me to respond. His comments seemed to suggest that the strike vote was influenced, tainted or some- how dictated by their "union bosses" in Detroit. It sure sounded that way to me. He used the words "union bosses" or "bosses" no fewer than five times. UAW Local 833 has not struck Kohler for more than 30 years, and the company's "last, best and final offer" had been rejected by 94 percent of the membership voting by secret ballot. Last week, 91 percent of the 1,846 union workers who voted approved a new contract. (Try getting 90-plus percent of Americans to agree on anything these days. Those big, bad "bosses" must have been sil- ver-tongued spellbinders.) I have been a proud UAW member for more than 40 years and the fact of the mat- ter is the UAW is as open and as democratic an organization as you'll find on this planet. From the shop-floor stewards to the inter- national union president, the UAW leader- ship is elected by the rank-and-file member- ship. Elections are conducted according to the international union's constitution. Changes can be made to that document only by vote at the constitutional convention by delegates elected by the rank-and-file mem- bers in secret ballot. Any change made by the delegates, after debate, must be shared with the membership in a timely manner. The decision to strike was made solely by the Local 833 members, again by secret bal- lot. Belling's charge that it was "foisted on them by the union's Detroit bosses" is patently absurd. I ask you, Mr. Belling, when was the last time you were able to vote for your "boss"? Bob McKenna Bay View Abele irresponsible with spending To the editor: Again Mr. Money-bags has hit TV air time with yet another paid phony ad. Election times are when they put them out there and want you to believe them. Where was County Executive Chris Abele all this time? These ads are only distractions to take your minds off what's really going on. He's trying to spend a lot of our money, if we let him, and then we'll have many years of try- ing to pay it back. He's not alone, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has a hand in it, too. Having a lot of money doesn't always make you the smartest person, especially if you inherit it. We should all be that lucky! Abele is paying those people to say what he wants, other than that he'd never give them the time of day. I'm sick of hearing: "It's about time someone did something for us" when all of us have to pay it back, not just one group of people he is trying to sucker in. There'll be millions and millions of dollars your kids will still be paying when most of us are long gone, and there still won't be any jobs to speak of. We need someone who will get our budg- et on track, spending only where we need to and cutting where we have to. The way things are now, we should not be cutting on our safety. Who's coming to live in a city or start a business when all you hear on the news on a daily basis are shootings after shootings after shootings, car-jackings, rob- beries and homicides, including children being killed. Step down Abele, you do not have the peo- ple's safety at heart. Get your head out of a hoop! Bonnie Meyer Cudahy OPINION LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Officials preach openness, then move to limit public access BY JESSICA MCBRIDE Is it so much to ask that the state "public records board that no one had ever heard of" would not (allegedly) violate the state "open meetings law" to make it harder to get some public records? Is it so much to ask that officials, governor on down, who preach the principles of "big government," would stand against restrict- ing the public's access to government records? The open records and meetings laws are critical — absolutely essential — to a func- tioning democracy. Thomas Jefferson knew this when he famously expressed that he pre- ferred newspapers to government. Patrick Henry knew this when he declared, "the lib- erties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." As a reporter, I have used the open meet- ings and open records laws many times. As a journalism instructor, I teach them. My stu- dents use them all of the time when report- ing stories. What are tyrants' greatest fear? The free flow of information and empowerment of the citizenry. When referring to John Doe 2, Republicans constantly express how the First Amendment is under attack. However, another part of the First Amendment that absolutely must be protected is freedom of the press. The open records and meetings laws allow the press to perform its watchdog function. The press isn't perfect. But remember this also: Every single right accorded to the press by the open records and open meetings laws is also accorded equally to you, the citizen. I am of the general belief that more trans- parency and public scrutiny of government is almost never a bad thing. It's amazing to me that some Republicans seem to think we are supposed to have so much inherent trust in government that we aren't supposed to be upset when government curtails some of our rights to know what it is doing. Yet they keep doing it. And they need to keep being called out on it. I will say it: Walker's record on open records is abysmal. First, there was the "secret router" that some of his aides erected in the county to circum- vent open records laws. A judge later released a slew of records sent over that router because they were public record from the get go; Walker still to this day has refused to answer whether he knew about this scheme to get around the open records laws. Then there was the "deliberative process" mess from the summer. You remember that, I am sure. The Legislature tried to change state open records laws so that citizens could- n't get "deliberative process" documents. In other words, they think you should get to know less (or nothing) about what goes into governmental decisions and who is influenc- ing them. You remember there was a hue and cry and everyone, governor on down, took to the air- waves to say, sorry, we take it back, that was a mistake. Only the governor's office has asserted the same exact deliberative process argument in try- ing to deny records requests for things like the Wisconsin Idea debacle. They are battling it out in court with one group that wants such documents. Yes, still. If the governor really stands on the side of the public's right to know, release those records. But that's not all. The Legislature removed the requirement that donors disclose their employers, making it harder to trace influ- ence on government. See the pattern? Now, we learn that a "Public Records Board" half packed with gubernatorial appointments and one from our attorney general, secretly rede- fined the definition of a transitory record to include a lot of stuff it didn't include before. Governmental text messages and other documents wouldn't have to be retained and thus available to you. The head of the board called this "minor clarifying language." This is what the board expanded the transitory definition to include (meaning the records could be deleted): "emails to schedule or con- firm meetings or events, committee agendas and minutes received by members on a dis- tribution list, interim files, tracking and con- trol files, recordings used for training pur- poses and ad hoc reports for individual use." Sounds potentially significant. The board is now going to revisit the issue, after a freedom of information group filed an open meetings complaint alleging the vote violated open meetings laws. This board took its original vote in August, and no one picked up on it until now because it was done in secret. The governor's office has denied that he had anything to do with these changes. However, a day after the August vote, the gov- ernor's office denied a newspaper's records request for text messages using the same rationale. Sound familiar? The texts related to a controversial Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation $500,000 loan that involved Walker appointees — your money. Of course, this is the point. You can't as easily figure out who influenced this debacle, either, if the media and citizenry can't get deliberative process and transitory records. None of this sounds good for us. It sounds good for government. People who preach about big government should stop acting like it. (Jessica McBride is a Merton resident and journalism instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her opinions are her own and don't represent UWM.) McBride

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