Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm today filed two felony counts against Milwaukee County Supervisor Johnny Thomas, accusing him of accepting a bribe and misconduct in public office.
Chisholm said in a statement that Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele's staff first raised concerns about Thomas last fall, and the complaint details meetings between Abele's director of administrative services Patrick Farley and Thomas.
The meetings included Farley wearing a wiretap and giving Thomas $500 supplied by prosecutors under the guise the money was a bribe designed to get the supervisor to schedule a Finance and Audit Committee vote on a contract that he had been holding up.
The day after accepting the $500, Thomas, who chairs the committee, added the contract vote to the agenda for the committee's next meeting, according to the criminal complaint.
Read the complaint: http://wispolitics.com/1006/120202_Johnny_Thomas_complaint.pdf.
- WisPolitics.com

Tammy Baldwin, a candidate for U.S. Senate, will be the featured guest of the Milwaukee Press Club's next Newsmaker Luncheon on Monday, Feb. 20, from 11:45 to 1:30 p.m. at the Newsroom Pub in downtown Milwaukee at 137 E. Wells St.
Baldwin’s appearance will be the second in the series of Newsmaker Luncheons featuring the Wisconsin candidates for U.S. Senate. The series kicked off Jan. 23 with Republican Tommy Thompson.
In 1999, Baldwin became the first woman elected to Congress from Wisconsin and the first self-declared lesbian to serve in Congress. She represents the state’s 2nd Congressional District.
She is vying for the U.S. Senate seat to be vacated by Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl, who is retiring.
The general election will be held Tuesday, Nov. 6.
The public is invited to attend each of the Newsmaker Luncheons featuring the Senate candidates, who will be interviewed by a panel of professional journalists. The Newsmaker Luncheons are moderated by BizTimes executive editor Steve Jagler.
The series will continue with Republican candidates Mark Neumann (March 19) and Jeff Fitzgerald (March 21).
The Milwaukee Press Club presents the Newsmaker Luncheons to shed light on issues of the day. The public is invited to attend the luncheons. The cost to attend is $15 for MPC members, $20 for non-members, $10 for students. Lunch is included. Seating will be limited.  Pre-registration and advance payment is required and may be done online at www.milwaukeepressclub.org.
- BizTimes Milwaukee

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is focusing his re-election campaign this year on jobs and public safety, even as pundits and political observers wonder about his chances of taking on Gov. Scott Walker in a potential statewide recall election.
“Clearly we are going to focus on creating jobs and retaining and attracting businesses throughout the entire city, so that’s one plank if you will,” Barrett said in an interview with WisPolitics. “The second is to continue the work we’ve begun on crime reduction.”
Barrett says visitors often remark on how nice Milwaukee is, but he admits there is a need to address the challenges facing the city, namely jobs and public safety.
The mayor said there are several sectors where the city can achieve job growth, pointing to health care, computer software, water, and food production as places of “relative strength.” However, in particular, Barrett would like to focus on advanced manufacturing.
In the WisPolitics interview, Barrett emphasized his focus is on the mayoral race, despite speculation he is eyeing a rematch in a potential recall election against Walker.
"I'm running for mayor right now, and I'm very pleased to be running for mayor," Barrett said.
Pressed on how the speculation could impact his mayoral race, Barrett said the timeline for a recall election isn't clear enough to tell.
"Again, I stress I am running for re-election as mayor and there will certainly be a time when an election is ordered, or certified, but until then I'm focusing on a job that I like,” he said.
Barrett pushed back on criticisms that he used some of the tools from Walker’s reforms in order to balance the city’s budget. Barrett said he had a history of working through the collective bargaining process in his time as mayor and said his preference would be for the state to return to that setup.
"What people don't point out though, when they're criticizing me, is this city took huge, huge cuts in shared revenue, in recycling money, in money for local roads," Barrett said. "We cannot print money at the local level and so we have to find a way to balance the budget.”
Barrett said the city had not had to lay off large numbers of employees like other major cities, something he took credit for.
“That’s happened not by accident, it’s happened because I’ve managed the resources of this city in a very responsible fashion, and my hope is I can continue to do that.”
The mayor added that he had “an obligation” to the residents of the city to maintain services without massive layoffs.
See more from the interview at WisPolitics.com: http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=260081.
- WisPolitics.com

The latest charges from the long-running John Doe probe cite Kelly Rindfleisch and Darlene Wink for doing campaign work from their Milwaukee County offices.
Documents released by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office allege extensive political activity in Gov. Scott Walker's county office as well as the existence of a secret email system set up so his workers could conduct both official and unofficial business on county time.
Rindfleisch, a longtime Republican political aide from Columbus, served as Walker’s deputy chief of staff. She faces four felony counts of misconduct in public office, punishable by up to 3.5 years in prison and $10,000 fines on each count.
The complaint says she sent some 300 emails during her working hours at the county, many related to fundraising for Brett Davis, at the time a lawmaker and lt. governor candidate. She also sent or received some 1,380 emails related to fundraising activities during working hours.
Wink, a familiar face around Milwaukee Co. politics for years, faces two misdemeanor counts of political solicitation by a public employee. Wink's misdemeanor counts each carry penalties of up to six months in jail and fines of up to $1,000.
Peter Wolff, Wink’s attorney, said his client had no intent to do anything wrong and that Walker didn't know about her activities.
Wink was not charged with felonies because her political activities were "materially less extensive" than others and she has provided information for a related investigation into the "destruction of digital evidence," according to a letter from the DA's office.
- WisPolitics.com

In remarks to the press following a brief speech at Tool Service Corp. in Wauwatosa, Gov. Scott Walker said his campaign has been cooperating with John Doe investigators for more than a year, adding he did not think the probe was targeting him and that people will see when it’s done “our integrity remains intact.”
Walker repeatedly insisted that in his previous position as Milwaukee County executive, his office had expressed clear rules prohibiting political activity on county time. The remarks were his first public comments following the filing of charges on Jan. 26 against Rindfleisch and Wink, both accused of doing political work from his old county office.
As proof of his policy against politicking on county time, Walker said he asked for Wink’s resignation within hours of finding out that she had been posting comments.
Walker said he did this "even though she's a very nice woman."
But Walker deflected most questions from the press about his knowledge of wrongdoing by other staff members.
"Our campaign has been cooperating with individuals looking into this.  As part of that, we plan to continue to cooperate with them,” Walker said. “On details that were announced yesterday, they've made it pretty clear the rules they have in place in terms of conversations about that, they made it clear to us as to what we can express and not express, so I can tell you we enforced the policy. In terms of other details, for our campaign to be able to be in a position to continue to cooperate with them, we need to abide by that."
- WisPolitics.com

A former aide to state Sen. Spencer Coggs has filed a complaint with the state Government Accountability Board charging the Milwaukee Democrat hired a Capitol staffer largely to work on his lieutenant governor campaign and had other employees in his office attend to personal family matters, including helping his wife’s business.
Jana Williams, who Coggs terminated last January, alleges in the complaint that Enis Ragland’s “support and interest” in the senator’s 2010 lieutenant governor campaign was evident from the time he was hired just months before Coggs announced in December 2009.
But Coggs denied the allegations in an interview with WisPolitics.com and said he has not been contacted by the Government Accountability Board about the allegations. Coggs said he had not been told he was involved and disputed the allegations that any of his staffers did anything improper.
“None of them to my knowledge did anything on state time, nor would I ask them to do anything on state time,” Coggs said.
Zak Williams, who ran Coggs’ lt. guv campaign in 2010 and now oversees his bid for Milwaukee treasurer, said a decision by the state Equal Rights Division to dismiss a discrimination complaint from Jana Williams undercuts her credibility and the claims she made about Coggs’ staff doing campaign or personal work on state time.
“There are some pretty crazy allegations there that are just not believable, and I think it further underscores how ridiculous this whole thing is,” Williams said.
See more on the story from WisPolitics.com:  http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=259926.
- WisPolitics.com

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore's fourth quarter report to the Federal Election Commission showed the Milwaukee Democrat raised $86,260 in the final three months of 2011, spent $68,708 and had $44,340 cash on hand.
Dan Sebring, a Milwaukee Republican mounting another campaign against Moore, reported $1,475 both raised and spent, with a cash balance of zero.
Moore defeated Sebring by just over 80,000 votes in their 2010 match-up.
- WisPolitics.com

Milwaukee Public Schools (MP)S) will be one of only seven districts around the country selected to benefit from an $18 million GE Foundation grant to help train teachers and administrators on improved math, science and literacy standards adopted by Wisconsin and more than 40 other states.
Today’s announcement comes after the GE Foundation awarded $20.4 million to MPS last year in a five-year grant to boost math and science education.
“This is another sign that one of the world’s largest companies has faith in the direction in which Milwaukee Public Schools is moving,” MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton said. “MPS will get the benefit of the top-notch expertise as we work to improve the education of our 80,000 students.”
The new $18 million grant will fund training at MPS and six other districts from Student Achievement Partners, a group involved in the development of the “Common Core Standards” now in place in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
“It brings students in this city, state and country up to the rigor of knowledge that is being expected around the world,” MPS high school teacher John Kish said. “It returns learning back to a process of exploration and using evidence for argument, rather than rote knowledge that, in some cases, education has become.”
Robert Corcoran, president and chair of the GE Foundation and vice president of GE Corporate Citizenship, said, “Our economy is facing an undeniable challenge — good paying jobs are going unfilled because U.S. workers don’t have the skills to fill the positions. We must cultivate a highly educated workforce and we see the (Common Core) Standards as a key component to answering this challenge.”
The earlier GE Foundation grant is being used to train teachers, support struggling students and bolster the district’s Comprehensive Math and Science Plan.
- BizTimes Milwaukee

Here's a quick look at some upcoming political events: 

- State Rep. Paul Farrow, R-Peewaukee, and Waukesha Co. Exec. Dan Vrakas invite public input on higher education in Waukesha Co. They will hold a listening session on Feb. 6 at UW-Waukesha, starting at 12 p.m.

- UW-Milwaukee will hold the first in a series of Fireside Forum’s on Feb. 7. The event runs from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the UWM Union Alumni Fireside Lounge. The first topic is “Immigration Policy and the States,” with former INS head Doris Meissner and Voces de la Frontera Executive Director Christine Neumann-Ortiz.

- Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett will deliver the State of the City address on Feb. 13, starting at 8 a.m. The address will be held at Ingeteam on Canal St.

See details on these and other events at http://wispolitics.com/index.iml?Content=22.