by Tony Palmeri
November 28, 2001
One of the fundamental principles of the Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was that Boss Politics in all of its forms needed to be eradicated from American political institutions at all levels. In contemporary terms, the political boss achieved a kind of "personality cult" status among not only his underlings, but among most key players in the political system. The fact that the boss was revered and subsidized by the wealthy land owners and industrialists of the day only added to his cult status. Consequently, lower-level officials especially at the municipal level either (1) lived in fear of the boss and remained silent in the face of his abuses or (2) confronted the boss mostly on trivial issues.
One way of looking at Progressivism is as a movement against fear and and trivial pursuits as the main forces motivating public officials. In his autobiography (1912), Wisconsin's great progressive Robert LaFollette defined the kind of individuals it would take to reform the boss system: "The fundamental problem as to which shall rule, men or property, is still unsettled; it will require the highest qualities of heroism, the profoundest devotion to duty in this and in the coming generation, to reconstruct our institutions to meet the requirements of a new age. May such brave and true leaders develop that the people will not be led astray. . . ."
Recently, the city of Oshkosh and Winnebago County have provided us with textbook examples of boss politics at work, with fear governing the former and trivial pursuits the latter. On the Oshkosh Common Council, "Boss" Jon Dell'Antonia has been able to chill the First Amendment rights of citizens without hearing a peep of protest from his six Council colleagues (the "Silent Six"). On the Winnebago County Board of Supervisors, six supervisors (the "Sentient Six") actually reacted to Boss Joe Maehl's (Maehl is the Board Chair) unilateral removal of blinking lights on the County Board voting scoreboard by sponsoring and getting passed a resolution to restore the blinking lights. Let's discuss each case individually.
In Oshkosh, the Mayor is not elected directly by the people. Rather, s/he is elected in a closed meeting by the 7 members of the Common Council. In the Council/Manager form of government such as that which exists in Oshkosh, the powers of the Mayor are limited; much of the function is ceremonial and the major responsibilities include chairing the meetings and recommending appointments to city boards and commissions.
That a Mayor in such a system of government could achieve Boss Status --as has the current Mayor Jon Dell'Antonia--is incredible, and would be laughable were it not such a perversion of representative democracy. How has he achieved such status? In June of this year, the Mayor became upset after seeing a web site which suggested corruption on the part of city officials. The Mayor wrote a letter to the City Attorney asking him to "nail to the cross" the producer of the website.
The Mayor's six peers on Common Council (Stephen Hintz, Shirley Brabender Mattox, Bill Castle, Mark Harris, Paul Esslinger, Melanie Bloechl) refused to reprimand the Mayor for his actions, and in fact didn't say much of anything about the situation. Thus, they have been called "The Silent Six." If a Mayor is exposed to have improperly used the City Attorney, and if as a result citizens have a legitimate concern that their First Amendment rights are under siege, and if the Council refuses even to assure the citizens that their concerns are valid, then what else can we conclude but that the Mayor exerts Boss power over his peers?
The situation on the Winnebago County Board is more laughable, though still a symptom of boss politics. Apparently, 6 members of the Board came to the realization that the Board Chamber's electronic voting scoreboard, which for years featured the name of each supervisor speaking (or wanting to speak) in blinking lights, no longer blinked. Chairman Maehl used general budget funds to have the scoreboard "fixed." Part of the "fix" was the elimination of the blinking lights; thus only Maehl at his Chair dais would know who wanted to speak and in what order.
Now, there's surely nothing wrong with the Supervisors wanting their blinking lights back. But they actually needed a 6-person sponsored resolution to do it? For anyone who watched the Board's deliberation on the resolution, what was amusing was not only how much time was spent discussing what was in essence a $500 resolution, but how much distrust there was/is for Boss Maehl. The strong subtext of the resolution supporters' comments was that Boss Maehl was somehow trying to manipulate the board discussions, silence supervisors, or otherwise exert undue influence. Even if all of that were true, what does it say about the state of politics in Winnebago County when six supervisors get together to sponsor a resolution not to restructure county government in any meaningful way, or to take a stand for or against something that is just or unjust in the community, but to bring back blinking lights. So perceptive were the 6 resolution sponsors about the banishment of scoreboard blinkage that I felt no choice but to award them with the "sentient" title. I'm also thinking of asking the Board to adopt a new slogan: "Winnebago County Government: Where The Experimental Aircraft Assocation Gets What It Wants With A Wink, An Expensive Jail Gets Built While Services Sink, But That Voting Board Can Sure As Hell Blink!"
Though Mr. Maehl's power on the Board does not even approach that of old Mayor Daley of Chicago, it's astonishing how the board acts toward him as if he is so empowered. If Maehl did in fact de-blink the blinking lights so as to silence the supervisors, perhaps it was a kind of Daley imitiation. Consider this passage from Mike Royko's classic Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (New York: New American Library, 1971):
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"It is his council, and in all the years it has never once defied him as a body . . . He looks down at them, bestowing a nod or a benign smile on a few favorites, and they smile back gratefully . . . If provoked, he'll break into a rambling, ranting speech, waving his arms, shaking his fists, defending his judgement, defending his administration, always with the familiar 'it is easy to criticize . . . to find fault . . . but where are your programs . . . where are your ideas . . .' All else failing, he will look toward a glass booth above the spectator's balcony and make a gesture known only to the man in the booth who operates the sound system that controls the microphone on each alderman's desk. The man in the booth will touch a switch and the offending critic's microphone will go dead and stay dead until he sinks into his chair and closes his mouth." (pp. 19-20). |
The Chicago City Council could have passed resolutions preventing Daley from manipulating the sound system, but that would have only made them look weak, petty, and ridiculous. No doubt an egotistical and arrogant SOB like Daley would have loved reducing the Council to such actions.
In the end, LaFollette had it right: the only way to end boss politics is to develop a citizen-centered progressive agenda that eliminates the very need for a boss or makes him irrelevant. One of the reasons why the Socialist Party was so popular among immigrants and the population at large in Milwaukee and other cities at the turn of the last century is because the party leaders didn't just complain about municipal bosses or attack them on trivial grounds but actually engaged the voters with a program for change.
We don't have any LaFollette progressives or "sewer socialists" in Oshkosh or Winnebago County government at the moment. What we do have is a pathetic imitation of an old-time boss system where the Common Council is ruled by fear and the County Board is trampled by trivial pursuits. The winners? Boss Dell'Antonia , Boss Maehl, and well-connected special interests. The losers? Take a look in the mirror.
I like your new slogan for the county.
The relationship between the EAA and County politicians is nothing short of corrupt.
One could write a thesis on how the EAA has the politicians by the balls but it is probably best summed by the following statistics.
*The county charges our kids $1 per day to swim in the lakes in two county parks. The theory behind the charge is that "user fees" must cover the cost of operating the service.
*The county charges the EAA about ten cents a day for each of the attendees using the airport during the annual fly in. The theory behind this steep discount seems to be that rich guys flying expensive airplanes shouldn't be required to pay the same equitable user fees as our kids.
The daily ten cent per day fee, of course, is computed by dividing the approximately $80,000 annual rent the EAA plays the county for use of the airport by the approximate EAA 750,000 attendees.
Now here is a trivia question for your audience. Who is the only Winnebago County politician ever known to have paid for his own ticket to the EAA fly-in?
Regards,
Russell Meerdink
meerdink@athenet.net