Developer Defrauds Government, Appointed to Oversee Development
A Milwaukee developer convicted of defrauding the government was appointed to a key board after giving Mayor Tom Barrett $1,200 in campaign donations.
The 2004 criminal conviction came as a result of Boris Gohkman’s part in a scheme to defraud the Medicare program.
In 2008, Barrett appointed Gohkman, a real estate developer, to a Business Improvement District Board (BID).
Between the 2004 conviction and 2008 appointment, Barrett took $1,200 in campaign contributions from Gohkman.
“Less than two years after Gohkman was convicted of felony fraud, Mayor Barrett is accepting campaign cash from him,” said Chris Kliesmet of Citizens for Responsible Government.
“Talk about appointing the fox to guard the henhouse, Barrett appoints a developer convicted of defrauding the government to a board overseeing city development efforts,” said Kliesmet. “Why not give an accountant convicted of embezzlement the checkbook while you’re at it?”
Thursday, October 14, 2010
OpenSky Remains a Failure
Despite Revisionist Claims of Success
UWM Grenade Threat Exposes Shortcomings
Lost in all the continuing revelations of technical system failures and missed implementation dates is the stunning failure of the City of Milwaukee OpenSky radio system to meet it primary objective – to provide an interoperable communications platform for all critical city emergency responders including police, fire, and other key departments. This capability was the impetus behind the federal mandates to upgrade emergency communication and coordination systems in the aftermath of the September 11th disaster.
As early as July of 2003, the City of Milwaukee amended the OpenSky contract to include the Milwaukee Fire Department with final purchase occurring in 2005 under Mayor Tom Barrett (see the Exhibit at http://www.crgnetwork.com/Shared/Open%20Sky%20Officer%20Reports/OpenSky%20Fire%20Department%20Documents/Exhibits/OpenSky%20-%20Exhibit%204.pdf). Far beyond the recent total system failure of both police and fire radios and the failure to install already purchased and required equipment, the OpenSky system is still not close to accomplishing its primary goal of interdepartmental communication.
“Forget the pie in the sky notion that emergency responders will one day be able to coordinate firefighting and high speed police chases across municipal boundaries,” said Citizens for Responsible Government spokesperson Chris Kliesmet. “City of Milwaukee Firefighters cannot even directly communicate with City of Milwaukee Police across the street. Just the other day we had a situation where City of Milwaukee police officers could not talk with armed and sworn officers of the UW-Milwaukee Police Department over the discovery of a hand grenade. Imagine if this were a crazed gunman on campus. How many dead students would we be talking about today? The OpenSky project is so late, over-budget, and of such poor quality that any accomplishment at all is hailed as a complete victory. This is nothing but pre-election posturing. Basic OpenSky installation and coverage is still incomplete and its functionally no where near delivering what was promised to citizens and City emergency personnel and paid for by taxpayers.”
UWM Grenade Threat Exposes Shortcomings
Lost in all the continuing revelations of technical system failures and missed implementation dates is the stunning failure of the City of Milwaukee OpenSky radio system to meet it primary objective – to provide an interoperable communications platform for all critical city emergency responders including police, fire, and other key departments. This capability was the impetus behind the federal mandates to upgrade emergency communication and coordination systems in the aftermath of the September 11th disaster.
As early as July of 2003, the City of Milwaukee amended the OpenSky contract to include the Milwaukee Fire Department with final purchase occurring in 2005 under Mayor Tom Barrett (see the Exhibit at http://www.crgnetwork.com/Shared/Open%20Sky%20Officer%20Reports/OpenSky%20Fire%20Department%20Documents/Exhibits/OpenSky%20-%20Exhibit%204.pdf). Far beyond the recent total system failure of both police and fire radios and the failure to install already purchased and required equipment, the OpenSky system is still not close to accomplishing its primary goal of interdepartmental communication.
“Forget the pie in the sky notion that emergency responders will one day be able to coordinate firefighting and high speed police chases across municipal boundaries,” said Citizens for Responsible Government spokesperson Chris Kliesmet. “City of Milwaukee Firefighters cannot even directly communicate with City of Milwaukee Police across the street. Just the other day we had a situation where City of Milwaukee police officers could not talk with armed and sworn officers of the UW-Milwaukee Police Department over the discovery of a hand grenade. Imagine if this were a crazed gunman on campus. How many dead students would we be talking about today? The OpenSky project is so late, over-budget, and of such poor quality that any accomplishment at all is hailed as a complete victory. This is nothing but pre-election posturing. Basic OpenSky installation and coverage is still incomplete and its functionally no where near delivering what was promised to citizens and City emergency personnel and paid for by taxpayers.”
Friday, October 8, 2010
Is Barrett Playing Politics with Officer Lives?
OpenSky Radio Blackout the Second This Year
The $18 million OpenSky fire and police radio system was five years late and millions over budget when Mayor Tom Barrett finally found a reason to declare mission accomplished. With one month remaining before the gubernatorial election, Barrett had his police chief declare the system fully operational.
October 1 Milwaukee Police Chief Flynn declared, "We're announcing, sooner than we really wanted to, that on Wednesday, September 22nd, we flicked the switch, so to speak, and made the total conversion to 700 megahertz on the digital system."
A week later, the entire system crashed, as it had earlier this year.
“Barrett knew the danger because the system had crashed before,” said Chris Kliesmet of watchdog group Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG). “CRG published a series of ‘Alarm Bell’ wake up calls to the mayor and OpenSky problems in other cities are widely known. This system is unsafe. One has to ask the question. Did Mayor Barrett push his Chief to bring the system up before it was ready for political purposes? After five years of failure and missed deadlines but an election only a month away, the timing is curious.”
CRG has documented the January 9th crash as well as failures in multiple tests of the system over months of research. CRG has combed through over 1,000 pages of fire and police documents on OpenSky to bring the scandal to light.
“How many more times will we accept being lied to about OpenSky? We got lucky this time. The Mayor needs to get the job done and stop playing poker with the lives of police officers, fire fighters and the public,” said Kliesmet. “Politics should stop where lives are on the line.”
Monday, October 4, 2010
Unelected Boards Create Campaign Cash
"Barrett" Example Yields Over $150,000 in Board Contributions
Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) has long analyzed and reported on the drawbacks of unelected boards, particularly those with the power to unilaterally impose taxes. The CRG audit and online database of Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) Board spending and the well-publicized shortcomings of the Metro-Milwaukee Sewage District (MMSD) Board highlight a lengthy list of perceived problems with unelected boards given broad regulatory power as well as taxing power without direct voter representation.
CRG began an investigation and analysis of MMSD due to citizen outrage over recent flooding and basement sewage back-ups. Initial findings suggested that these failures are largely due to governance issues at the City of Milwaukee and on the MMSD Board level rather than operational issues at MMSD. Further investigation of political actions and involvement within MMSD revealed significant contributions from MMSD Board members to the politicians that appoint them.
For example, MMSD Board members contributed almost $10,000 to Tom Barrett campaigns with $4,000 being contributed in 2009-2010 election cycle alone. Every MMSD Board member who contributed gave at least $100, six gave at least $250, five gave at least $500, and three gave over $1000 with one donor exceeding $2000 and another exceeding $3000.
As a result, a pilot project was undertaken to analyze and understand the relationship between political contributions and appointments to boards such as MMSD. The City of Milwaukee and Mayor Barrett were chosen as the initial study example based on the large number of appointed boards the City has jurisdiction over as well as the large number of mayoral appointees to those boards.
The study methodology required compiling a partial list of mayoral board appointees by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to 92 boards during his tenure as mayor (list is partial as a complete list of past appointees do not exist – spouses were included on list). This list was cross-indexed against contributions to Barrett campaigns from 7/1/2000 to 6/30/2010 obtained from databases maintained by the City of Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. The entire tabulated data set may be downloaded at http://www.crgnetwork.com/shared/Barrett%20Board%20Appointee%20Contributors%20Worksheet-update.xls.
The following are selected statistics from the analysis
Total Campaign Contribution Dollars $151,307.79
Average Contribution Per Donation $330.37
Average Total Contributions Per Donor $1,220.22
Barrett also made dubious appointments of local real estate developers to Business Improvement District boards after receiving substantial campaign cash.
Convicted felon Boris Gohkman received one such appointment after $1200 in campaign donations. Even more suspicious was the appointment of Ronald San Felippo after making a series $1500 donations to Barrett on the 22nd of six consecutive months (January to June). San Felippo was subsequently appointed 6 days later on June 28th!
Project leader Chris Kliesmet commented, “The numbers yielded by our analysis were quite surprising and perhaps more than a little disturbing. Given that the total contributions are well into six figures and the average total contributions per donor crosses the one-thousand dollar mark, it does suggest at least a perception of impropriety that should be addressed, particularly when reviewing compensated boards. Additionally, one must not discount the imputed value of the regulatory power wielded even by uncompensated boards. For those seeking appointments, and there are many who covet such appointments, the regulatory power may be more highly valued than any monetary reward. Whether by design or sheer happenstance, it is safe to say that the power to make unelected board appointments can be used as a tool to raise campaign cash and creates yet another strong argument against unelected boards. CRG will issue updates to our investigations should our analyses continue to yield noteworthy results.”
Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) has long analyzed and reported on the drawbacks of unelected boards, particularly those with the power to unilaterally impose taxes. The CRG audit and online database of Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) Board spending and the well-publicized shortcomings of the Metro-Milwaukee Sewage District (MMSD) Board highlight a lengthy list of perceived problems with unelected boards given broad regulatory power as well as taxing power without direct voter representation.
CRG began an investigation and analysis of MMSD due to citizen outrage over recent flooding and basement sewage back-ups. Initial findings suggested that these failures are largely due to governance issues at the City of Milwaukee and on the MMSD Board level rather than operational issues at MMSD. Further investigation of political actions and involvement within MMSD revealed significant contributions from MMSD Board members to the politicians that appoint them.
For example, MMSD Board members contributed almost $10,000 to Tom Barrett campaigns with $4,000 being contributed in 2009-2010 election cycle alone. Every MMSD Board member who contributed gave at least $100, six gave at least $250, five gave at least $500, and three gave over $1000 with one donor exceeding $2000 and another exceeding $3000.
As a result, a pilot project was undertaken to analyze and understand the relationship between political contributions and appointments to boards such as MMSD. The City of Milwaukee and Mayor Barrett were chosen as the initial study example based on the large number of appointed boards the City has jurisdiction over as well as the large number of mayoral appointees to those boards.
The study methodology required compiling a partial list of mayoral board appointees by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to 92 boards during his tenure as mayor (list is partial as a complete list of past appointees do not exist – spouses were included on list). This list was cross-indexed against contributions to Barrett campaigns from 7/1/2000 to 6/30/2010 obtained from databases maintained by the City of Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. The entire tabulated data set may be downloaded at http://www.crgnetwork.com/shared/Barrett%20Board%20Appointee%20Contributors%20Worksheet-update.xls.
The following are selected statistics from the analysis
Total Campaign Contribution Dollars $151,307.79
Average Contribution Per Donation $330.37
Average Total Contributions Per Donor $1,220.22
Barrett also made dubious appointments of local real estate developers to Business Improvement District boards after receiving substantial campaign cash.
Convicted felon Boris Gohkman received one such appointment after $1200 in campaign donations. Even more suspicious was the appointment of Ronald San Felippo after making a series $1500 donations to Barrett on the 22nd of six consecutive months (January to June). San Felippo was subsequently appointed 6 days later on June 28th!
Project leader Chris Kliesmet commented, “The numbers yielded by our analysis were quite surprising and perhaps more than a little disturbing. Given that the total contributions are well into six figures and the average total contributions per donor crosses the one-thousand dollar mark, it does suggest at least a perception of impropriety that should be addressed, particularly when reviewing compensated boards. Additionally, one must not discount the imputed value of the regulatory power wielded even by uncompensated boards. For those seeking appointments, and there are many who covet such appointments, the regulatory power may be more highly valued than any monetary reward. Whether by design or sheer happenstance, it is safe to say that the power to make unelected board appointments can be used as a tool to raise campaign cash and creates yet another strong argument against unelected boards. CRG will issue updates to our investigations should our analyses continue to yield noteworthy results.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)