Protecting the Great Lakes Starts with Caring About Them, Author Says

As a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and author of a new, acclaimed book, Dan Egan has been deeply immersed (I suppose the pun is intended) in issues involving the Great Lakes for well over a decade. Few people can talk or write with the depth and breadth he can about a long list of lakes-related subjects, from Asian carp to lake levels to the history of use of the lakes.

But when he was asked on Wednesday, during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Marquette Law School, what people can do as citizens to help the lakes, Egan’s answer was, by his own description, “deceptively simple.”

Sure, get up to speed on the issues. Speak up to politicians and policy makers. But the first thing Egan recommended: “Take your kids swimming at the lake or take them fishing, if you have the means to. Make sure they have a relationship with the lakes so they care about the lakes as they get older.”

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Milwaukee’s Property Tax Heavy Revenue System Needs Change, Researcher Says

The City of Milwaukee stands out among its peers when it comes to the structure for financing government functions. And that’s not a good thing.

A new report from the Public Policy Forum, a non-partisan Milwaukee non-profit that researches government issues, finds that Milwaukee receives a higher share of its revenue to run city government from property taxes than any other city among 39 in America with populations between 300,000 and 1 million. And Milwaukee stands alone by a wide margin.

Other cities have more tools for collecting revenue than Milwaukee, including sales taxes, local income taxes and entertainment taxes, Rob Henken, president of the policy forum, said at an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Marquette Law School on Wednesday. That leaves Milwaukee overly reliant on two ways of paying for public service — property taxes and state aid payments that have been effectively shrinking.

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Going Beyond Police Patrols to Problem-Solving Policing

Doing police patrol work is hard, but it often is pretty routine. An officer drives around, waits for calls and responds to them, deals with specific incidents, and writes reports about them. “There’s a simplicity in it,” said Michael Scott, a former police officer and police chief.

But if police work is to be done in the most effective way, it needs to go beyond that routine, Scott said. It needs to aim to deal with or at least understand problems that underlie so many instances of crime, disorder, or other trouble.

That explains why Scott has become the director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, an organization which promotes exactly that problem-solving approach to police work. He is also a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He was previously a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison.

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