Tag: Christine Sinicki

If you live in the 20th Assembly District of Wisconsin, you’ll have an opportunity to tell Christine Sinicki to oppose Scott Walker’s NBA corporate welfare giveway

If you live in the 20th Assembly District of Wisconsin, which is entirely within Milwaukee County and includes the southern-most part of the City of Milwaukee and all of St. Francis and Cudahy, you’ll have a rare opportunity in Wisconsin. You’ll have the opportunity to tell Wisconsin State Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) to oppose a corporate welfare giveaway for the proposed Milwaukee Bucks arena. The event is scheduled for Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 9 A.M., and the event will be held at 3558 E. Sivyer Ave. in St. Francis, Wisconsin.

There are a number of reasons why this deal is bad for Milwaukee and Wisconsin:

  • The deal would send hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Wisconsinites’ taxpayer money to the owners of the the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, including Jon Hammes, who is a co-chairman for Scott Walker’s presidential campaign.
  • The arena’s estimated lifespan is 30 years, after which, the Bucks owners would be demanding more taxpayer money for yet another new arena once again if they get the deal for the arena they intend to build over the next couple of years.
  • The deal includes a ton of tax exemptions that would severely restrict the amount of tax revenue that could be generated by the deal, resulting in less tax revenue being available for roads, schools, and other things that serve a public purpose.
  • Marquette University’s basketball team would likely be a regular tenant of the arena, in possible violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
  • The deal includes the creation of a special “entertainment district”, which would likely consist of mostly of national chain bars and restaurants, that is unsustainable and would likely drive local businesses in Milwaukee out of operation.
  • The new arena would be managed by a board consisting partially of elected officials who aren’t from the Milwaukee area and aren’t elected by Milwaukeeans, such as Jennifer Shilling (who is from La Crosse, located over 170 miles from Milwaukee), while completely shutting out the Milwaukee County Board from making any appointments to the board.
  • The deal would not restore one penny of funding that was taken from public schools, state parks, and other things that received budget cuts from Scott Walker’s state budget.
  • Given that the NBA has mandated that the Bucks either build a new arena in Milwaukee or move elsewhere before the start of the 2017-2018 NBA season, that would leave a roughly two-year window for the Bucks to build the arena, and any significant construction delays would result in the arena not being built on time, the Bucks being forced to move, and Milwaukee being stuck with an unfinished arena.

If a lot of opponents of the Milwaukee Bucks corporate welfare giveaway show up, you may be able to help sway Christine Sinicki to do the right thing and vote against the Bucks corporate welfare giveaway. Letting the Milwaukee Bucks move to Las Vegas (or some other city) would be, by far, the lesser of two evils compared to wasting more of Wisconsinites’ taxpayer money that would probably see little or no return on investment for taxpayers.

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Wisconsin public education takeover public hearing turns into total farce, Republicans in full damage control mode

The Wisconsin State Assembly education committee, chaired by Republican State Representative Jeremy Theisfeldt of Fond du Lac, held a public hearing today on 2015 Wisconsin Assembly Bill 1 (AB1), a proposed “school accountability” bill that isn’t actually a school accountability bill, but rather a bill to shame, takeover, and privatize public schools in Wisconsin.

The original bill that was brought to the public hearing was so atrocious, the public hearing turned into a total farce and the Republicans that control the committee have gone into full damage control mode. I’ll let the tweets from The Progressive magazine columnist and Madison Common Council candidate Rebecca Kemble and the author of the progressive blog Wisconsin Soapbox, who have been livetweeting today’s public hearing, speak for themselves:

…and that was just the first hour or so of the 11 1/2 hour public hearing.

To summarize all of that, Jeremy Theisfeldt and his fellow Republicans brought the bill to the public hearing and was quickly criticized by Democrats over horrible provisions in the bill and the bill not having a fiscal note despite the bill having a significant fiscal impact on local school districts in Wisconsin. That forced the Theisfeldt to remove a provision from the bill that would have authorized a state panel that would have had the power to take over public schools in Wisconsin and give them to millionaire charter school operators, as well as some of the other more atrocious provisions of the bill, without scheduling a second public hearing for the modified bill. That forced Theisfeldt to go into total damage control mode as he was attacked by both Republican (Dean Knudson of Hudson) and Democratic (Sondy Pope of Verona and Christine Sinicki of Milwaukee) state representatives, with Sinicki pointing out that the modified bill would still allow for public schools in Wisconsin to be taken over by the state and given to millionaire charter school operators. Theisfeldt comes across as a guy who is way over his head and is making a total fool of himself.

In my nearly four years as a political blogger, this public hearing on Wisconsin AB1 has been the single biggest farce I’ve read about.