Media and others interpreting civil unrest in Milwaukee might want to dig deeper into a few issues:
* Cities are creatures of the state in Wisconsin, and during the Scott Walker era, Milwaukee has lost state-supplied revenue - - the program dates back decades as a substitute for the ability to operate local income tax collections - - and also lost the ability to expand its budget above state-mandated limits.
* The "hypersegregation" label applied to Milwaukee is regional, tolerated for decades.
Many of these issues and impacts have been studied and reported to death, but the state and region resist meaningful change.
* The state put a permanent limitation on Milwaukee's growth, tax base, job market and citizen opportunities when it froze the city's borders in 1955 through the so-called anti-annexation "Oak Creek Law." No other Wisconsin municipality has had its borders - - and its future - - fixed by a special state law.
As a result, suburbanization around Milwaukee boomed, and with it also a proliferation of discriminatory housing local ordinances which, though ruled illegal years later, remain camouflaged through legal substitutes mandating expensive, relatively large housing lots (River Hills, in northern Milwaukee County, for example) or costly home construction square footages (in Chenequa, in Waukesha County, for example), that effectively kept residency upper-income and predominately white.
* The state created a seven-county Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission in the late 1960's made up of Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, Walworth, Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha Counties.
SEWRPC, with staff and headquarters in Western Waukesha County that is far from Milwaukee, literally and philosophically - - and not even on a transit line - - prepares influential studies, provides technical assistance to governmental agencies in matters such as housing, water and transportation, and has the power to approve certain highway projects paid for with federal funds.
All effect job creation, access, distribution, and economic opportunity.
The commission's makeup, focus and output is heavily suburban and exurban.
Each of the counties has three commission seats. For most of its existence, the commission had no African-American members.
Most of the region has higher incomes and housing values than does Milwaukee.
Commissioner appointments are controlled by the Governor and the counties.
The City of Milwaukee, with a population larger than all the non-Milwaukee counties, and by far the largest number of transit dependent, minority and low-income residents in the region and state, has no designated commission seat or appointing authority.
Yet the commission's budget comes 100% from taxes, so the city of Milwaukee and its residents are taxed without representation for commission purposes.
In recent years, the commission did establish a task force on economic justice, but only after initial resistance and successful pressure from citizen and civil rights organizations.
The same kind of pressure recently led to federal civil rights litigation which forced the state to add a relative pittance - - about $11 million dollars worth of temporary transit services - - to a billion-dollar regional highway expansion at Milwaukee's western border with more affluent, faster-growing Waukesha County which the state is building at the recommendation of the commission.
More billions have been spent and will be added in future years to the same freeway expansion principally serving white, affluent areas in the region without transit extensions.
* Waukesha County, GOP state legislators, and then-GOP Gov.Tommy Thompson blocked light rail connections between the City of Milwaukee and Waukesha County then went further and blocked light rail development within the City of Milwaukee.
A summary story about light rail, regional politics and disparities and SEWRPC, here.
Some years later, Waukesha County officials pulled the plug on a jointly-funded bus line that connected the two counties, thus depriving Milwaukee residents of reasonable access to out-county jobs who, in large numbers, have no access to an automobile.
* As has been par for the course, the state just helped win for the City of Waukesha a jobs-and-growth guaranteeing diversion of water from Lake Michigan
In other words, state and regional policies have kept Milwaukee and its residents land-locked, economically stunted, disconnected from neighboring wealthier, whiter areas and thus segregated - - regionally - - by race and economic status.
* Add in Walker's failed job-creation policies, his scandal-ridden and failed job-creation agency, his refusal to allow the minimum wage to rise above the poverty-enforcing level of $7.25/hr. and his deletion of tens of thousands of poor people from food stamp roles - - summary posting, here - - what do you think the ripple effects have been and will continue to be in the Wisconsin city with the largest number of low-income and unemployed people?
This blog has covered these issues for nearly ten years. There are hundreds of posts with supporting documentation. Use the index box at the upper left.
if we're going to have a discussion about segregation, let's look at the bigger picture.
* Cities are creatures of the state in Wisconsin, and during the Scott Walker era, Milwaukee has lost state-supplied revenue - - the program dates back decades as a substitute for the ability to operate local income tax collections - - and also lost the ability to expand its budget above state-mandated limits.
* The "hypersegregation" label applied to Milwaukee is regional, tolerated for decades.
Many of these issues and impacts have been studied and reported to death, but the state and region resist meaningful change.
* The state put a permanent limitation on Milwaukee's growth, tax base, job market and citizen opportunities when it froze the city's borders in 1955 through the so-called anti-annexation "Oak Creek Law." No other Wisconsin municipality has had its borders - - and its future - - fixed by a special state law.
As a result, suburbanization around Milwaukee boomed, and with it also a proliferation of discriminatory housing local ordinances which, though ruled illegal years later, remain camouflaged through legal substitutes mandating expensive, relatively large housing lots (River Hills, in northern Milwaukee County, for example) or costly home construction square footages (in Chenequa, in Waukesha County, for example), that effectively kept residency upper-income and predominately white.
* The state created a seven-county Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission in the late 1960's made up of Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, Walworth, Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha Counties.
SEWRPC, with staff and headquarters in Western Waukesha County that is far from Milwaukee, literally and philosophically - - and not even on a transit line - - prepares influential studies, provides technical assistance to governmental agencies in matters such as housing, water and transportation, and has the power to approve certain highway projects paid for with federal funds.
All effect job creation, access, distribution, and economic opportunity.
The commission's makeup, focus and output is heavily suburban and exurban.
Each of the counties has three commission seats. For most of its existence, the commission had no African-American members.
Most of the region has higher incomes and housing values than does Milwaukee.
Commissioner appointments are controlled by the Governor and the counties.
The City of Milwaukee, with a population larger than all the non-Milwaukee counties, and by far the largest number of transit dependent, minority and low-income residents in the region and state, has no designated commission seat or appointing authority.
Yet the commission's budget comes 100% from taxes, so the city of Milwaukee and its residents are taxed without representation for commission purposes.
In recent years, the commission did establish a task force on economic justice, but only after initial resistance and successful pressure from citizen and civil rights organizations.
The same kind of pressure recently led to federal civil rights litigation which forced the state to add a relative pittance - - about $11 million dollars worth of temporary transit services - - to a billion-dollar regional highway expansion at Milwaukee's western border with more affluent, faster-growing Waukesha County which the state is building at the recommendation of the commission.
More billions have been spent and will be added in future years to the same freeway expansion principally serving white, affluent areas in the region without transit extensions.
* Waukesha County, GOP state legislators, and then-GOP Gov.Tommy Thompson blocked light rail connections between the City of Milwaukee and Waukesha County then went further and blocked light rail development within the City of Milwaukee.
A summary story about light rail, regional politics and disparities and SEWRPC, here.
Some years later, Waukesha County officials pulled the plug on a jointly-funded bus line that connected the two counties, thus depriving Milwaukee residents of reasonable access to out-county jobs who, in large numbers, have no access to an automobile.
* As has been par for the course, the state just helped win for the City of Waukesha a jobs-and-growth guaranteeing diversion of water from Lake Michigan
In other words, state and regional policies have kept Milwaukee and its residents land-locked, economically stunted, disconnected from neighboring wealthier, whiter areas and thus segregated - - regionally - - by race and economic status.
* Add in Walker's failed job-creation policies, his scandal-ridden and failed job-creation agency, his refusal to allow the minimum wage to rise above the poverty-enforcing level of $7.25/hr. and his deletion of tens of thousands of poor people from food stamp roles - - summary posting, here - - what do you think the ripple effects have been and will continue to be in the Wisconsin city with the largest number of low-income and unemployed people?
This blog has covered these issues for nearly ten years. There are hundreds of posts with supporting documentation. Use the index box at the upper left.
if we're going to have a discussion about segregation, let's look at the bigger picture.