 Welcome to the award-winning Donahue Group. We're delighted that you could join us for a half an hour of fast-paced, highly intelligent, and hopefully not too controversial conversation on areas of great interest. We've planned, oh, so Ken is going to be controversial. She didn't say funny. Ken is going to be controversial. The rest of us are going to be refined and controlled in any event. Summer. It's summer. And we plan, it's our great plan not to laugh uproariously and out of control as we did last time. So we'll see how we do. Best show we did. Best show we ever did. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue. I'm the moderator of this small but highly intelligent group of commentators. I'm a lawyer at O'Neill Cannon. Cal Potter, sitting across from me, former state senator. Tom Paneski, now associate dean at the University of Wisconsin-Chaboyton campus and still earning a living by teaching math. Ken Risto soon to go back to earning a living as a simple social studies teacher. So we're a good group and we'll have a good time today even though it is a little bit of the dog days of August, kind of nice outside but just feeling a little sleepy. So we'll see if we can wake everybody up. And I'm gonna start just with one of my favorite topics is the residency rule in the city of Chaboyton. And we're gonna talk to Tom as a former Alder person about his particular views on it. But a little background, the city of Chaboyton, I think probably fairly reasonably, requires at least a few of its employees to live within the city limits. And that would include department heads. People who are hired get six months to move to town and if they don't, they can apply for an extension. It's my understanding. Well, the controversy that's coming up now is Tudor Lee who was hired in December as the new IT or technology person for the city has asked for an extension. It's my understanding, he lives in Waukesha and he has a wife and a number of children in Waukesha. His house is one of 89 in his subdivision that are up for sale. So, you know, the housing market's a little rough. And there's been a big controversy at the city council level about extending that residency, the time for him to move into the city. There's a vote scheduled for August 18th. It's my understanding to give him a 90 day extension, but Nunk Pro Tunk, as we say in the legal biz, going back to June 20th, which really doesn't give him any more time at all another month or so. Cryfoul, great idea. The council lost its mind. Is this the smartest thing they've ever done? What do you think? You're gonna look at me, but when we changed the residency law, when I was an alderman, we just basically said department heads had to live in the city because they can, they could have a conflict of interest if they lived outside the city and they were making decisions that would affect the areas in which they lived in. So, we kind of said department heads should live in the city and other employees could live wherever they want, basically. And now, I guess that's still in place and so the person was hired. I don't know how they're gonna resolve this. I've been thinking about that. He's actively involved in making major changes to the information technology part of the city and he's having trouble selling his house. I don't know how the city's gonna resolve that. I was trying to think what I would do if I, you know, what kind of information would I seek? I don't know. Well, the purpose of the rule was because of what you're outlining, Tom, which is that potentially people can make decisions that might benefit the community they live in as opposed to the community they serve and get a salary for. That was the intent. In this particular gentleman's job description, can you envision a scenario where that would happen? Yeah, I mean, I can't. I can't either. I mean, in Waukesha, like you said, and I mean, how does the information technology gonna benefit where he lives? Well, let me complicate it. Probably not. And heaven knows, it's not like it's a tremendous advantage living in Waukesha and commuting to Sheboygan, I would assume, five days a week and trying to raise a family and trying to sell a property. It seems to me there's enough incentive for him to move into the community as soon as he possibly can Well, let me complicate it a little bit for you because it's my understanding that he is more than willing at this point to get an apartment and to actually live here during the week, but while he is still trying to sell his house, because it is his desire, as I understand it, I don't have any of this firsthand, so who knows. But it's my understanding that he's more than willing to, it is hearsay, willing to move to town. Actually, it's got certain guarantees of reliability, so it should be fine. In any event, the city is revising the residency. Can't put it in some sort of rule that guy. I guess that means I was overruled. There you go, quick study. The city has really fleshing out this residency policy by some fairly draconian measures. In other words, it's not good enough that you have an address here, that your mail comes here, that you vote here, that your car is registered here, that your telephone service is here, that you pay rent here. The new policy or the measures that they're trying to enact to ensure that somebody really is a resident of the city are, in my opinion, fairly draconian, and I don't get it. I don't get it. I mean, I understand. Do they wish his wife chained to a backyard? What is the standard that they wish if he unreasonably wanted to do? Well, I mean, it appears that if you're married, your spouse had, God, I'm well better be in the community, that there is no, that... Really, they're saying that? Yes, absolutely. No, that's... Absolutely. You should read this policy that the city is looking at. We had a professor, I mean, in today's world, I mean, we had a professor in English. She was here. Her husband was working in Massachusetts and they were separated for four years that way. He eventually was able to come here and then he worked at UWM. Not for the city of Sheboygan. They lived apart and they made time to get together, but people live apart. That's absolutely absurd. It's really quite remarkable. And so my concern is that by all measures from everything that I hear here say, Tudor Lee is doing really a pretty stunning job and in less than a year he is moving the city pretty quickly into the 21st century where it had not been technology wise for some period of time. So I don't know what's going to happen here, but there seems to be some mean spiritedness somehow and not toward Tudor particularly, but in this new policy and these new standards that they're going to be using, which by the way has taken straight from a league of Wisconsin municipalities opinion, these are some of the things that you can look for. But I mean, what if you just had a husband and wife and they pursued very separate careers and. Which is far more typical than it used to be. Heaven knows. It has to be. People need to in case they survive today. And people have apartments, you know. I mean, it's like legislators for goodness sake have apartments in Madison because, you know, when I work for the DPI, I had an apartment in Madison. I still live back here. My wife was like that back here. So it's the way it is. Yeah, exactly. So I don't see how they can be punitive towards him. I mean, he's got a house that he can't sell. How he can't create the job market, the housing market. He's just, you're going to have to give him multiple extensions. It's the only fair thing and right thing to do. I mean, if he's shown good faith to get an apartment, he's here. And that's all you can expect of somebody. You can't expect anybody to create the economic conditions that sell houses. That's just the way it is. Anybody have a head count on the console? Is this where they're going to go? I don't know. I don't know. It's interesting to see who votes on what line here. There was another spin-off on this, which appeared in the paper. Mayor Perez wanted to make it an administrative function to decide on the extension. And the council's saying is, no, it's our ordinance. We make the decision. And apparently, that was a little give and take on that. And it's now back with the council making the decision. But I just saw that Dick Susha had a little letter to the editor complaining. What's Mayor Perez wanting to do make an administrative function of this? He's commanding power. You know, I bet Mayor Susha wishes he had thought of that when he was mayor. Is there precedent for that? I don't know. I don't know either. There's types of personnel decisions. I would think that it is more of a legislative than administrative action. I mean, I'm not sure I haven't researched it. And it's an interesting question. It's not, to me, there's no real immediate or apparent action. Personnel director might handle it for a while. And then until it became a political issue, and then it probably finds its way to a council. But without being at a political issue, maybe the personnel director might handle it as an extension. Well, the silver lining in this kind of funny cloud is that, I think, Tudor Lee is, as I say by all measure, pretty well-regarded and is moving people along pretty quickly. So that's a good thing. And I think it's something the city needed. Well, it actually indicates all smoothly and how quietly government must be running in the city during the summer that this becomes quite the issue. The issue, yeah. It's a nice change of pace, huh? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, both McCain and Obama have offices opened up and in full swing downtown. And where are they at? On North East Street. Both of them? Yeah, where's the Democratic? Are they sharing? And then there's a spirit of bipartisanship. Democrat office, I think, is on Pennsylvania. And on the 8th. On the 8th, East of the 8th. Northeast corner. The law office, there was Dirks, Boston. Oh, OK. And the old South Speedle building. OK, very good. And then the Republican headquarters is where the Old Walgreens was, across the street from Yonkers. Yonkers, yeah. Boston store, excuse me. Kitty corner, as we say in Cheboygan? Yeah. Yeah, but there's no corner now, aren't there? Yeah, it was, well, the corner's true. Yeah, there's a kind of continuous kitty alley. Kitty alley. Kitty alley. The old, the coffee bookstore place. Yeah, that coffee bookstore. And Walgreens. It's kind of a deadly place for any business to be. It just really, it just hasn't succeeded well over the years. I could make a partisan remark right here. But the interesting thing to me is, because that's the neighborhood I work in, for a while there were all the McCain signs. And it's got a nice, sharp look, I will say. A nice, sharp look, and it looks prosperous. And I haven't looked at the Democratic one yet. McCain's sign, McCain, McCain. And above it, Jose, Jose, Jose. And I now have learned that the Jose signs, or I've observed that the Jose signs are down. So I, and that may be, and we can talk a little bit about, there's an actual primary in the 26th assembly district that affects most of the city. And what else, Kohler? And that's about it. So Terry Van Akron is the current incumbent. And I think Terry's running for his fourth term. Boy, time does go quickly, doesn't it? When is the primary? If there is a primary, that's coming up then, like September 9th or something? September 9th, I think it's this, usually the second Tuesday of the, September, so it's coming up. And we're sitting around before the, before our going on the air, trying to figure out the name of the dear fellow who's running against Joe Jose on the Republican side. And we haven't quite determined that. And we apologize, that's a little lack of knowledge there that we should probably not confess to, but it should be interesting. I don't know what forum the Republicans are gonna use to highlight these two, or if they're going to do that at all. Well, the little narrative in the paper, when papers were filed, was the fellow from Kohler said he was asked to run by the Republican party. So I think there were people giving second thoughts to a repeat of the Van Ackman-Jose race last time in which Van Ackman got what, 72% of the vote. So if you're gonna mount a vigorous campaign, I think you need a candidate that's gonna do better than 27% of the vote. Right, that's what we call in Sheboygan a schvetsing. So I think Mr. Jose got a little bit of a schvetsing. So it'll be interesting. I think Terry Van Ackman would be very hard to beat. Yes, good political name. It is a great political name. I like that name, quite a lot as a matter of fact. It has a certain ring to it, a little Dutch, but you know how that is. But I think Terry is pretty well. You can't say Dutch and Democratic too often. That's true. Not south of here, at least. Yeah, not south of here. Well, you know, I think Jose is gonna be playing, I don't know what he's learned from that last electoral experience, but I saw him and others and other politicians in the parade, the 4th of July parade, and it seems like it's the same mantra that he used in the last campaign, which was family values. And so I don't know what he's gonna do differently, perhaps avoid imitating Hispanic people on the radio. Maybe you'll learn that this time, I don't know. But other than that, it sounds like the same stories. And so I don't know, I can see where the Republican party may want to find an alternative for people to consider. Speaking of the Republican party, it's my understanding that Dan Lemahue down in the... Cedar Grove. Cedar Grove. Ousberg area. Ousberg area, which would be... Primary opponent. Has a primary opponent. So on the McCarty. And that's interesting. Does anybody, I know nothing about that race. I believe he's in education in some way. And I don't know if he's running because he's more liberal and he's running as a Republican, because a Democrat will never win in that district. It's just impossible. So I don't know very much about the person, but I do know he has a primary. I didn't know he had a primary until I saw some of the signs up. I was driving to Coascom Saturday and I saw some of the signs up. I think he's from West Bend. And I was in West Bend this last weekend. There were a lot of signs. So maybe he does have a good deal of support that might be closer than we think. You couldn't run for the right than Lemahue, could you? He's pretty conservative. That's what I mean. That's my impression and looking at his votes. The few forms that I've seen and it's not been a lot of forms in all honesty, but I can't imagine that you'd run from the right. Dan Lemahue certainly has a strong base just in the sense from his years on the county board and his service is the county board chair and he was an excellent county board chair and he's strong in his small area. So the question is how has- Well known as a result of having been an incumbent now for several years. Right, so that'll be interesting. As you know, I'm always at the administration building on any election night for the League of Women Voters calling in campaign results or voting results. So I'll be down on September 9th and I'll have a good sense of it. It went fairly unnoticed in the Sheboygan Press until there was an editorial but it certainly made the news in the Plymouth Review and the Beacon and the Sheboygan Falls news about a Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce initiative called Guiding Principles of Economic Development. I read the articles that appeared in the newspapers and then the editorial in the Sheboygan Press which was very positive. This is an initiative on behalf of the Sheboygan County of Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce to get all municipalities working together in terms of business recruitment. I think it's a wonderful idea and all sorts of little municipalities as well as the big ones have signed on to it but there was a great picture in the Plymouth Review kind of a long table of some of the signatories and you had Mayor Perez at one end and Supervisor Hollub at the other end, both smiling and that almost never happens. So it seemed to me that it really was a wonderful event and I think that the Sheboygan Chamber of Commerce is, I think their business development is going great guns. I think they're making a real positive effort to really bring businesses together and to kind of think about how do we do this recruiting business and so forth. Yeah, John Rogers, I think is the person that's in charge of that and for all of you who want to know who John Rogers is, he was the lobster guy in the parade. I thought you were the lobster. No, he was the lobster guy, but anyway, he's very, you know, he's very. You had lobster ears. I had lobster ears. Or a lobster claws. I was only partially lobster, but. Okay. He was partially lobster me. He's quite an interesting fellow and he's, he worked in development in, I think, Kowani and he's now here and he's leaving his mark at least, like you said, communities getting together and looking to how best serve the county. Yeah, I think, like I say, I think it's, it's anything that we can do to recruit businesses into this community, really, obviously. I mean, that's a no brainer, it makes some sense. So unemployment is up and it would be great to have it go down a little bit. I was not at the parade, the Bratwurst Day parade and I guess I'm glad, kind of a scary event and were any of you folks in the vicinity? My parents were a block away. Okay. Oh, I was out of town, so I just read it in the paper. It brings into sharp relief, I think, a really complex policy issue, which I know law enforcement always struggles with, which is high speed chases. And the plain fact is they, the officers, as I understand the Sheriff's Department, really stopped the chase, nine blocks or so before the parade, which was a good idea. But the guy they were chasing didn't realize it, or. Come on, he's drunk, so. And he's drunk, yes. I mean, so his judgment is not, is not doing too well. I've always been troubled by these high speed chases. I know the Sheriff's Department and I am relatively sure the Sheboygan City Police certainly have policies in place, but it's tough. Thank goodness that we live in the day we do, because I talked to Chief Kirk about a week ago and he was saying that the officer that was cited in the press is moving these kids out of the way and so on, got the radio signal from other officers and it was relayed quickly that this guy's coming. And so, without the communication system we have today and the ability to get the Sheriff's Department in contact with the city police and get to the guy who's standing on the street corner with his walkie-talkie or whatever communication device they have could have been very terrible had this happened 20 years ago because the guy would have been blinded by this vehicle speeding down the street. Yeah, and so it was a tough situation and it certainly could have come out much worse, but I'm just wondering under what circumstances high speed chases. You see a violator or you see a car with a license plate that you're looking for or something like that and you put on your blinker to go after him and the guy takes off, what do you do? Just kind of sit there and let him go. Yeah, and if you did it all the time, everybody would take off. Well, everybody would take off. How do you manage this? It's tough. And how do you manage it? You gotta start to go after the person. There are some techniques, but again, require that sort of communication and coordination to be able to wire ahead if there are spikes that they can put on the road that really very effectively put the end to any kind of car going forward. The problem is that high speed chases rarely end well and sometimes they end so terribly tragically where really truly innocent people who would not have been hurt, but for the high speed chase are. And so the question becomes, what crime is worthy of a chase? Is it an OWI? Maybe, although those are the drivers that would be particularly dangerous. And you really don't know if they're OWI until after they pull over you've actually assessed them. Although, the high speed or. I mean, officers often through driving have pretty good indicators that the guy behind the wheel is not doing too well. So it's, it is tough and it just. Can I interrupt us? Yes, sure. Now if we in institute this cell phone, no talking on cell phones while driving. And so somebody's too long, kind of just not paying attention. He's on the cell phone. Do you put your blinker on and go after him? And then they all of a sudden take off. Yeah, yeah. Okay. On the other hand, it's not as easy to just say, well radio ahead because for some matters, it's very important for the officer to keep the driver in his sight. So he can say, when I pulled it over, pulled this guy over. It's the same guy that I saw, you know, who went by me and so. I think a lot of people don't really appreciate that point. The, you know, you hear people talking, especially when the young man from Sheboygan Lutheran was killed a couple of months ago. Just, he wasn't involved in the chase. He just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Oh, that was so sad. That was really tragic. There was some discussion about, well just get the license plate and then deal with it later. Well, the first question out of the defense layers, mouth is going to be, and appropriately so is, how do you know who it was behind that wheel? 24 hours later, 10 hours later, 12 hours later. And they've had an opportunity to sober up or whatever it might be, you know. So there, it is a complex question, but I mean, this could have been just potentially horrible and catastrophic. And thankfully, the deputies decided to stop, you know, nine blocks back. And, but in any event, you... I think the investment in technology is a wonderful expenditure that people need to support, not only in communication to the officers, but having video coverage in the squad so that eventually if that car does get away or you do terminate the chase, maybe you can, through enhancement, get that license number. And even the periodic intersection cameras, well, we haven't gone in Wisconsin to the stoplight and speeding violators just by getting a picture of your car, but there are communities in Milwaukee, one where you're trying to control crime by putting in some intersections, video cameras. So maybe those could catch some of these people as they whiz by and enhancement of the video, you'll get the license number. Is this more common than the past, or is it just that the media, we just seem to be more aware of it. I was thinking about this the other day and talked with some friends about what about this don't what people get? I mean, when you see the reds and blues, you pull over. I just don't know if it's just, you know, again, if it's just always been that way and we're just sort of just talking about it because we've had a couple episodes of it or if this generation of young people have watched Grand Theft Auto 45 and played it and somehow think this is all gonna end up being okay or watching cops and the chase shows, the real reality television shows that are there. I think it happens relatively rarely and just like, this has been a very tough summer for people swimming in Lake Michigan. I mean, we've had just tragedies and near tragedies at a rate I think feels much greater than in past summers and I think it's just one of those things, but I will tell you as a prosecutor when I'm doing drunk driving prosecution to have the video of the driver is a huge advantage. In some ways, both to the city or the village and the defendant because the defense lawyer can say to his client, this is what you looked like. Are you sure you wanna go to trial on this? And I've had several cases settled where the defendant looks pretty silly and then I've had some others where the blood test has come back very high and the guy looks fine. So it's a double-edged sword, but overall I would always be happier to have the video than not and I do think that that is a, I think it is a great advance, but you never know how that's gonna go. We'll just have to, I think we'll just have to see how it plays out. I think probably its population grows. I mean we think, I mean there are 5.3 million people in Wisconsin when some of us who are getting older can remember in the 50s when we had 3 million people in Wisconsin. So alcohol abuse is not less today than it was before. I mean it goes back to the German heritage in a tavern almost in every corner. So maybe more cars. You could walk too. Yeah. That's right. There you go. So more cars in the family. I mean what does an average family have today? Two, three cars. And years ago you didn't have that plus the mobility of young people today. So I think there are a number of factors that have changed in society that maybe give the appearance that flight from police is more common. Right. And I think the long series of articles that the press has done on drinking and alcohol abuse. That was long overdue. Is long overdue. I can remember serving for years and when somebody would suggest the two dollar a barrel beer tax rather than the dollar which has been in place for decades and you could just see the effect of the alcohol industry in Wisconsin. That was not an idea whose time had come because of the. I'm not sure it is yet. Yeah. I mean I don't think that beer tax changes anytime soon. I don't think so either. I don't either. I don't either. But again you have improved technology in terms of drunk driving. I mean in the old days you'd have these kind of cranky breathalysers and there was a lot more of a defense to an actual prosecution. Blood tests now are really actually fairly easy to go with and people still don't like to find people guilty of drunk driving. But the juries tend to believe that blood test. And so I think in that respect we're catching a lot more drunk drivers and we're convicting a whole lot more drunk drivers. Now we still have these three, four, five repeat offenders that ought to be thrown in jail for a longer period of time. Right. And that's a topic for a different day. But in any event we want to thank you for joining us. We have our, we've never thanked our wonderful producers. Harry Peltzer and Scott Mulek up there and our great camera guy Steven Fritz were also our laugh track. And so we really appreciate that. We give them a lot to laugh. So thanks for joining us and thanks to the crew.