Richard Longworth on Megacity Cooperation: “I Wish I Could Be More Optimistic”

People in the Chicago Megacity, defined as the 21-county region stretching from the Milwaukee area down through Chicago into Northwest Indiana, need to work together with great urgency so the region can compete in the global economy.  That was the opinion of Richard C. Longworth at the 2012 “Milwaukee’s Future in the Chicago Megacity” conference and in an essay he wrote for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before the conference.

Three years later, ahead of the July 28 “Public Attitudes in the Chicago Megacity: Who are we, and what are the possibilities?” conference, once again sponsored by the Marquette Law School and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Longworth is still just as concerned about the future of our region.  One of the world’s foremost experts on global cities, he follows the issue closely from Chicago despite having recently retired from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs where in 2012 he was a Senior Fellow on Global Cities. Before joining the council, he was a long-time reporter and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and United Press International. He is the author of three books on globalization, including “Caught in the Middle,” on the impact of globalization on the American Midwest, and of the new eBook, “On Global Cities.”

He talked with former Journal Sentinel editor Marty Kaiser earlier this month.

Q. In 2012 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a global economic think tank based in Paris, issued a 332-page report that advocated closer ties within the Chicago-Milwaukee economy, and declared the region “is at a tipping point.” The report was not optimistic about the future of the region, but said that if the region worked together it could become more competitive in the global economy.  You supported this view when you wrote about the issue and spoke at the “Milwaukee’s Future in the Chicago Megacity” conference at the Marquette Law School in 2012. Is your concern as strong as it was three years ago?

A. Yes. It definitely is. The need is still there. Nothing has changed since then to indicate that the region, as fragmented as it is, can prosper in a global economy unless it does work together and leverage its many strengths. The region is defined by the OECD as Milwaukee down through Chicago and northern Indiana.  Frankly, I would have taken it around Lake Michigan up to Grand Rapids.  I think it is very necessary for this region to work together because, as one cohesive economic region, it shares one huge natural resource, which is water, and a great deal of history.  It is based on the City of Chicago and expands out from there.   None of these areas exist separate from Chicago, so we are all interconnected anyway. But we don’t work together as a region.  We have this opportunity and we have the assets and we don’t make use of them.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Caperton Moment

wisconsin-supreme-courtThe definitive litmus test for the impartiality and competence of the Wisconsin Supreme Court took the form of a lengthy opinion issued in response to the consolidated action State of Wisconsin ex rel. Two Unnamed Petitioners v. Peterson (2015 WI 85) by our state’s highest court on July 16, 2015. They failed this test miserably. In that one day, the court managed to squander the entirety of its judicial capital and to risk making itself into a tribunal that is an insult to the distinguished jurists who have come before them. This is about much more than the unjustified halting of a bipartisan probe into potentially severe violations of Wisconsin’s election laws — it is a prime illustration of the corrosive and corruptive influence that money has on politics and, in particular, judicial politics. These decisions are more misguided and indeed may possibly be more corrupt than the decisions reached by the West Virginia Supreme Court that led to the now-famous United States Supreme Court decision Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. (556 U.S. 868) and inspired John Grisham’s best-selling novel The Appeal.

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Wisconsin’s State Motto: Forward or Backward? The Potential Demise of Open Records Law

In 1851, the state of Wisconsin adopted the simple word Forward as its state motto. It’s a powerful word that has symbolized the State’s progressive history. Lately, though, it seems like we’ve been going backward rather than forward. Case in point: open records law.

Wisconsin’s open records law has been around since 1981. Embodied in sections 19.31-19.39 of the Wisconsin Statutes, the law begins with a broad declaration of policy: “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those officers and employees who represent them.” Wis. Stat. § 19.31. The law “shall be construed in every instance with a presumption of complete public access, consistent with the conduct of governmental business. The denial of public access generally is contrary to the public interest, and only in an exceptional case may access be denied.” Id.

Open records law is consistent with transparency in government. Brett Healy, president of the conservative think-tank MacIver Institute, said, “Transparency in government is not a liberal or conservative issue, it is a good government issue. Taxpayers deserve access to government records, so they can keep politicians all across this great state honest and accountable.”

And the law has been used to do just that.

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