Will Allen: A Fascinating Life, a Bold Vision

A descendent of sharecroppers, a former professional basketball player, a man hailed nationwide as a visionary – you could make an hour listening to Will Allen fascinating if you stuck just to his personal story.

But in an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at Eckstein Hall on Tuesday, Allen went beyond his own life and his pioneering work on urban agriculture to a broader and intriguing matter: His vision for creating a major economic base in Milwaukee around urban agriculture, and particularly commercial growth of fish in industrial sized tanks. 

“I think we’re going to create thousands of jobs,” Allen told Gousha, Marquette Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy. “We’re the leading city in the nation in terms of food and water.” He added, “Fish today, that’s a huge opportunity.” 

Allen said two commercial aquaculture firms are planning to develop operations in the city and Growing Power, the urban agriculture operation he heads, is including tanks for cultivating fish in an unusual  five-story building it is planning for its home base along W. Silver Spring Dr., west of N. 51st St. 

Allen said if he had a million pounds of lake perch fillets today, he could sell them all by tomorrow.  

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Ombuds Perspective on Whistleblowing Laws

Last week, we had wonderful talk entitled Blowing the Whistle on Whistleblowing Laws.  Attorney Charles L. (Chuck) Howard is one of the few attorneys in the U.S. with extensive expertise in the legal issues of ombudsmen. Howard has a national practice in representing organizational ombudsmen at universities, multinational corporations, and research institutions.  His new book, entitled The Organizational Ombudsman: Origins, Roles and Operations–A Legal Guide, was just published by the American Bar Association (ABA) and is the nation’s definitive resource book about ombudsmen, mediation, and their impact in the workplace.

In this presentation, he explored how fear of retaliation limits the effectiveness of whistleblower laws and policies. There are hundreds of whistleblower laws in the United States that provide incentives for people to report misconduct and prohibit retaliation against them for doing so. While recoveries from laws like the False Claims Act are significant, the perception — and often the reality — of what happens to whistleblowers who do come forward is that they pay dearly for their actions. In addition to trying to reward whistleblowers, why are we not also looking for better ways to help people address workplace conflict or misconduct without having to be a whistleblower? Howard argued that an organizational ombudsman can help an organization address this gap between encouraging the reporting of misconduct and protecting those who raise issues.

Several of my students’ comments about the talk are below: 

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Budget Cuts Haven’t Meant Prosecution Cuts Here, Santelle Says

In case any criminals reading this are hoping to avoid prosecution because budget cuts are reducing the reach of federal prosecutors, their hopes are ill-founded – at least for now, according to James Santelle, the U.S. Attorney for the eastern district of Wisconsin.  

But down the road and even now in places other than eastern Wisconsin? Cutbacks in federal spending could and sometimes are translating into decisions not to prosecute cases, Santelle said. 

Speaking Tuesday at an “On the Issues” session at Eckstein Hall, Santelle told Mike Gousha, the Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy, that the staff he oversees in offices in Milwaukee and Green Bay, has been reduced from about 80 several years ago to about 70 now. More cuts may lie ahead, he said.

But so far, the reduction has been accomplished without affecting decisions on who to prosecute, Santelle said. That hasn’t been true in offices of US Attorneys in some places around the country, where decisions on matters such as “smaller” drug cases or white collar financial crimes are being shaped by whether the office has adequate resources. He said a $1 million bank fraud in some instances may be below the threshold a prosecutor has set for bringing a case to court, given practical limits on how much can get done.

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