Mistele, Blaska, wrong for Dane County

I've been busy with things other than blogging lately and feeling relatively uninspired to post anything--until good ol' Dave Blaska came along to save me. Thanks Dave! Your continued ignorance on matters of government and politics has cured my writer's block.

Blaska's newest screed over at The Daily Page has him playing a fairly tired tune: Kathleen Falk is history's greatest monster, Nancy Mistele will be our supervisorial savior, boo to funding for commuter rail and environmentally & economically friendly projects, etc. etc.

His fresh spin on this old refrain comes in the form of maligning the current move to provide state funding (mostly coming from its share of stimulus money) for two manure digesters. These machines help to remove phosphorous--that thing that so pollutes our lakes and makes them nearly impossible to swim in--from cow manure on area farms. In the process, they also use the bacteria on manure to create methane gas, which is then used to power generators and provide electricity.

Each digester also will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12,000 tons each year and generate $900,000 a year in renewable energy...

Still, this is somehow a terrible idea to Blaska, who claims that Falk and co. should be focusing their attention on more "urgent priorities" and that the digesters are a "project better left to the farm co-ops." Because farm co-ops have buckets of money to spare, and because apparently the quality of our local watersheds and renewable energy aren't urgent enough priorities for Blaska.

I, for one, rather miss being able to swim in lakes. I'm also rather keen on passing on a planet to my children that's in better shape than how I found it. Guess that's the old Girl Scout in me talking again.

Blaska goes on to point to the current pothole-a-riffic situation on University Ave. as further proof of Falk's incompetence. He completely fails to mention the fact that Falk recently announced a major reconstruction project on that very road. But! Both he and Mistele would much rather see the county go forward with a far more invasive project: The North Mendota Beltway. Can we say boondoggle?

Instead of adding more space for more cars and more emissions and increased traffic and higher pavement pollution run-off rates, how about we actually invest in mass transit? It cuts down on all of the aforementioned problems, and benefits people with lower incomes who might not otherwise have a way to get around town.

Falk is by no means perfect. In fact, I've been calling her on the failings surrounding the 911 center and other things for some time. But Mistele? Definitely worse. And quite a bit of a one-note wonder (OK, two if you count the NMB idea) with her incessent "noun-verb-911-center" prattle.

We should absolutely work to hold Falk and those associated more accountable for incidents like what happened with the Zimmermann case. We should foster better future leaders. We should be able to focus our attention on multiple priorities at once (unlike Blaska and Mistele's insistence on one thing at a time, but only if it has everything to do with "public safety" and nothing to do with conservation, etc.).

We should not vote Nancy Mistele into office.


(with apologies for the terrible Photoshop at top)

A noun, a verb, and the 911 center

Last night, current County Executive Kathleen Falk met her opponent, Nancy Mistele, for what was billed as an "executive forum." I was unable to attend, but the reports coming out of it have so far fairly well confirmed my feelings about both candidates: neither are particularly inspiring, and this is fast becoming a lesser of two evils scenario.

Which sucks. The position is too important to be reduced to such a decision. Jason Smathers, writing for the Badger Herald, summed it all up pretty well:

So what did we end up with? A Public Safety Cockatoo with a no concern for environmentalism — [Mistele] answered one question about preservation of a nature path by saying she didn’t think it needed to be part of the conversation right now — and an incumbent PR manager whose current duty seems to be telling the public what a great job she’s doing.

Really makes you wish we had a primary race, doesn’t it?

Yes, it really does. We deserve better candidates, but where are they? Because, quite frankly, I have been unimpressed with Falk's leadership, and am deeply concerned by the glaring holes left in her record by the massive fuck-ups with the 911 center. Mistele, on the other hand, strikes me as a one-note wonder with little regard for the other aspects of the job, little experience, and many opinions with which I differ wildly.

So you'll forgive my complete and utter lack of inspiration when it comes to this particular race. Is there anything to be done? Well, my first suggestion would be not to vote for Mistele. And if that automatically results in voting to keep Falk on for a bit longer, my second suggestion is to really start holding her feet to the fire.

Falk needs to stop dancing around the facts of what happened with the 911 center, take real responsibility, and then really truly actually work to implement all of the suggestions made in the original 2004 report about the center. None of this claiming to "have done each of the steps" it called for, which is exactly what Falk did last night even though, as the Wisconsin State Journal pointed out,

...the county followed some of the recommendations; rejected some, such as the consultant's suggestion that eight positions be hired immediately; or has yet to implement others, such as replacement of the computer-aided dispatch system.

It's hard to have confidence in Falk when she refuses to admit real culpability, or even state the real facts of the matter. And it's hard to have confidence in Mistele when she can't give any specifics about issues, and seems to have, as Smathers pointed out, attended the Rudy Guliani school of public debate: a noun, a verb and 911.

I can only hope that we get some decent candidates the next time around.

UPDATE: Jay Rath over at The Daily Page weighs in, too. Cripes, those comments from Mistele about not needing to protect wetlands because "no one would ever want to build there" just kill me.