Leon Todd

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Wisconsin Day Care Centers: Fraud or Honest Mistakes?

The story behind the scandals

Is the state going too far in its crackdown on state-subsidized day care providers?

According to the Milwaukee-based United Alliance of Day Care Providers (UADCP), that answer is yes.

“Unfortunately hundreds of parents and their children have been affected negatively by these rash decisions to have emergency meetings, changing policy and laws without advance notice to providers and parents,” the group stated in an Oct. 20 letter to elected officials.

In recent months, the state Legislature has enacted sweeping changes in the $385 million Wisconsin Shares program. That program subsidizes day care payments for families in Wisconsin Works (W-2), which was launched during Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson’s tenure in the 1990s. Without that subsidy, struggling parents could not afford to pay for child care while they’re at work or going to school. Many day care centers opened as a result, especially in under-served areas in Milwaukee, and the program grew by leaps and bounds.

Like Milwaukee’s voucher school program, which was also launched during the Thompson era, scant quality control or administrative oversight was built into the taxpayer-funded Wisconsin Shares from the beginning.

As a result, the state Legislative Audit Bureau estimated that up to $22 million was improperly paid to day care providers in 2008. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel launched an investigation into what it called fraud, and the state Legislature responded by granting the Department of Children and Families (DCF) enhanced powers to cut off payments to day care providers it believes received overpayments or committed fraud. In just a few weeks, more than 100 day care providers were kicked out of the program, because DCF “reasonably suspects program violations.”

But day care providers contend that the state has unfairly targeted day care centers in the city and have been suspending centers based on suspicion of fraud, not proof.

“UADCP members have been loyal partners with Milwaukee County, [the] state of Wisconsin, and the greater Milwaukee community upon conception of W-2,” the letter states. “We believe it is shameful the way the state and county have been treating these providers whose participation was critical to the success of the W-2 program.”

But DCF spokeswoman Stephanie Hayden said the department is only going after providers who it suspects have committed more than $10,000 worth of fraud.

“We’re making sure that taxpayer dollars are being used for hard-working, low-income people so they can have access to the Shares program,” Hayden said.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent?

State Rep. Tamara Grigsby, who has been an advocate for the child care providers in the Wisconsin Shares program, agrees that the state should identify and punish those who are intentionally defrauding the system.

But Grigsby also wants DCF to identify clerical errors made by day care providers and help bring those providers back into compliance. In fact, Grigsby inserted language into this summer’s legislation that would have allowed the state to go after providers that were suspected of committing “egregious or intentional fraud.” But the governor stripped out the term “intentional,” allowing DCF to go after what it suspects is egregious fraud.

“They now have free rein to just go after anyone who may have made a mistake,” Grigsby said.

But many day care providers feel that they’ve been unfairly targeted and forced to shut down based on suspicion of fraud when, more accurately, they’ve simply made clerical errors or have sloppy record keeping.

Attorney N. Lynette McNeely, legal redress chair for the Waukesha County Branch of the NAACP and an advocate for the day care providers, argues that the real problem with the program lies in inconsistent state and county administration and oversight, not with the day care providers themselves. She said many day care providers don’t realize they’re not in compliance until they’re suspended by the state, and they’re given no ability to correct their violations before suspension. Nor did the state or county give them much guidance on best business practices or compliance after they were admitted to the program.

“They’re suspending first, then asking questions later,” McNeely said.

Since the mass suspensions, six day care providers, four of them in Milwaukee County, have been reinstated after investigators found no fraud.

Barbara’s Story: Sabotage?

Take “Barbara,” for example, who asked that the Shepherd not print her real name because she is appealing her suspension and fears retaliation by the state.

Barbara had operated two day care centers in Milwaukee for more than a decade. On Sept. 18, when Barbara was traveling between her facilities, investigators stopped by one of her centers. The manager did not let them in. The investigators—who, the manager told Barbara, did not show identification—asked for the center’s attendance records. The manager did not want to turn over the records to strangers, so she told them the records were locked up.

The investigators reported that there were no children on site, yet Barbara and her manager say there were. DCF also reported that the center had attendance record violations twice before, in April 2009 and May 2008, and that licensers could not access the center on three other occasions. Barbara contends that the licensers did not come to her facility on those dates.

Barbara’s payments were cut off the day the investigators showed up at her day care center, but she didn’t find out until she saw her name in the paper on Sept. 23. The letter from the state informing her of her suspension arrived the next day.

Barbara said she called DCF to plead her case.

“I told them the [investigators] never set foot in my place and if they had they would have seen kids running toward the door,” Barbara said. “How did they go back and say there were no kids in attendance when they were there? They were told that my attendance records were locked away and they’d have to wait for me to get back. I was only five minutes away. They could have waited. It seemed more like they were sabotaging day cares and not trying to get the real information.”

Barbara is now appealing her case, but the system is overwhelmed. Her Nov. 9 phone hearing with an administrative law judge went nowhere because the attorney representing DCF didn’t have her paperwork in order.

“This is the only thing that providers are left to do,” Barbara said. “You put in paperwork and you sit back and wait and wait. Then you have a 10-minute phone conversation and you wait and wait again.”

Barbara was told that the appeals process could take up to eight months. In the meantime, one of her day care centers has shut down and her employees are out of work.

She had another meeting with the state’s attorney this week, and was unable to come to a resolution.

“They’re not trying to settle anything,” Barbara said.

A clarification regarding which providers DCF is targeting: DCF is targeting anyone who is committing fraud in any amount. One indicator is whether a provider is receiving more than $11,000 per "slot"—not, as I stated, providers who DCF suspects has committed more than $10,000 worth of fraud. Sorry for the confusion.--LK

Issue of the Week: Demonizing Day Care Providers

Plus Hero and Jerk of the Week

By Shepherd Express Staff

The Journal Sentinel did an investigative series on day care providers, which is good, but the paper’s sensationalized coverage was disgraceful. If there is fraud, it should be prosecuted, but the vast majority of the cases being labeled as fraud simply appear to be reporting errors. It is similar to the person who puts a number on the wrong line of a 1040 income tax form. It is not fraud; it is a reporting error.

Reasonable legislation was drafted and passed that would have dealt with any kind of intentional fraud, but Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed the word “intentional” out of the legislation. Thanks to Doyle’s selective veto, the state can now suspend payments to any day care provider if it “reasonably suspects” that a person has violated the program’s rules. The state doesn’t need to prove its accusations or even find that the provider had “intentionally” committed fraud. The state just needs to suspect it. And the day care providers aren’t given a chance to defend themselves until months after their payments have been suspended.

If there were any accusations of children being abused, which there were not, then perhaps that would have provided a rationale for immediately suspending centers and asking questions later.

Rational and fair-minded people must get past the hype and the headlines, take a closer look at what’s happening to these small businesses—many of them run by African-American women in the central city—and ask themselves how they would feel if their revenue was cut off by the state because unelected state bureaucrats decided that they “suspect” some kind of fraud was being committed. Do we really want to live in a society like that? For example, the Department of Justice raided at least one day care provider who had spoken to the press while she was in the process of appealing her case. This is not the way the American system works. It appears to be harassment and intimidation, pure and simple, a warning to other providers that they shouldn’t defend themselves.

Mr. Doyle, this is still America and people are innocent until proven guilty. Why is “due process,” one of the foundations of the American criminal justice system, ignored when it comes to small-scale day care centers?

Again, the Shepherd certainly condemns those who intentionally defraud the state. But we also condemn this Soviet-like witch hunt that doesn’t belong in the America that we learned about in our high-school civic classes.

Is the Doyle Administration Destroying Inner-City Businesses?

Working parents need day care

By Lisa Kaiser

Day care providers should expect up to 90 suspensions in the Wisconsin Shares program in the next few weeks, according to information presented at a meeting of day care providers on Saturday.

The potential suspensions, in addition to the more than 100 day cares that had payments suspended last year, would be the result of new background check requirements that could bar providers from the program if the center operators—and in some cases their employees or the people they live with—have been convicted of certain crimes.

Everyone would agree that a person convicted of any kind of child molestation should be permanently barred from being a day care provider, but the current law championed by Gov. Jim Doyle is mean-spirited and counterproductive, the providers’ advocates say.

On Tuesday, Stephanie Hayden, spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families (DCF), did not confirm that the suspensions would result after the new regulations go into effect on Feb. 1.

Hayden said DCF wants to ensure that day care centers are safe.

Suspensions for Old Violations and Pending Charges

The new background checks will be conducted quarterly on licensed providers, Hayden said, and annually on household members and employees. Background checks can delve into an individual’s past for some crimes committed after he or she turned 12.

According to a Dec. 7, 2009, DCF memo sent to day care providers, “even if the Department has issued a license or allowed a person to reside at a child care center with a criminal conviction in the past, the Department is now required to revoke the license if the licensee, a household resident or an employee has an offense that will permanently bar that person.”

Providers can be permanently barred for committing small-scale offenses such as food stamp fraud, even if such offenses occurred years ago.

The new regulations also affect those who have been charged but not convicted of certain crimes, even though Americans are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

The memo stated that “under the new law, the Department is required to suspend a child care license if the licensee, a household resident or caregiver has any pending charges for a crime included on the revised crimes list.”

In addition, rules passed in 2009 allow DCF to immediately and indefinitely suspend payments to Wisconsin Shares participants if the agency “reasonably suspects” the provider has committed fraud.

The providers contend that the new regulations are unfair, arbitrary and penalize people who may have made mistakes decades ago.

State Rep. Jason Fields questions the wisdom of new rules that don’t allow people to rehabilitate themselves and find meaningful work.

“We’ve all made mistakes—I’ve made a ton of them,” Fields said. “But because they were mistakes, should that prevent me from being able to live a life of success? Should it prevent me from doing something that I’m passionate about? Should I be held guilty for the rest of my life? I don’t think that’s right. They [the providers] have every reason to be concerned. It is to a point where it is unfair.”

Is This Legal?

The providers feel they have been targeted unfairly by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, DCF and state legislators seeking people to blame for alleged fraud in the state-run Wisconsin Shares program.

The increased pressure began last year, when the Journal Sentinel began reporting on alleged fraud within the program and sensationalized a few cases cherry-picked for its front page. Responding to the Journal Sentinel’s sensationalized reporting, Doyle, the new head of DCF Reggie Bicha and certain lawmakers vowed to root out fraud in the program.

The resulting regulations passed by the state Legislature correctly targeted egregious or intentional fraud. Doyle, however, stripped out the word “intentional” from the legislation, which allows DCF to immediately and indefinitely suspend payments to day care providers that it “reasonably suspects” of committing fraud—an extremely low burden of proof.

Many of the overpayments in question, the providers argue, are due to clerical errors and the state and county’s sloppy administration of the Shares program—not intentional fraud.

The suspended providers appealing their cases complain that the state doesn’t have enough evidence to prove their suspicions. In effect, the providers have to prove their innocence after losing their livelihood, instead of forcing the state to prove its case before suspending payments.

In the meantime, roughly 100 day care centers have been closed down and hundreds of parents are scrambling to find day care for their children so they can go to work because someone in the DCF suspects that there may be a violation.

“The appeals process—I’m not saying the judges are doing anything incorrectly, but I have to believe that there are people who are not looking at this from a fair point of view,” Rep. Fields said. “These ladies are getting their whole livelihoods taken away before they’re even found guilty of anything.”

Providers say the state has lost some of their records and that former employees are being pressured into making false allegations about their former bosses.

Fields has written a letter to state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen questioning the legality and constitutionality of the suspensions and appeals process.

“Some of this—you have to wonder if it is constitutional,” Fields told the Shepherd. “Can you be found guilty before you’re actually found guilty?”

A Witch Hunt

The mood at Saturday’s day care providers’ meeting—which drew about 100 people—was at times angry, frustrated, supportive and positive, depending on the topic and speaker. But mainly these providers are scared that their livelihoods will be taken away from them based on the state’s “reasonable” suspicions and a dragged-out appeals process. Even if vindicated, the providers will have lost five months or more of their income and their good reputations.

The effects of the new regulations, suspensions and what they term a “witch hunt” have been devastating, both personally and professionally, for the providers in the Wisconsin Shares program.

One suspended provider said that three of her former employees, without income since a well-publicized crackdown in mid-September, are now homeless. Another well-respected provider was recently suspended over an infraction she committed when she was 18—decades ago. Yet another provider, suspended over violations she had known nothing about and now disputes, had always been held up as an example for others to follow.

But the providers still in business are feeling threatened, too. While more providers will likely be suspended on Feb. 1, thanks to the more stringent background checks, the names of the providers have not been released.

At least one provider was visibly shaken when she talked about how she had left her professional job to open a day care center a few years ago. She now owns the building that houses the center, and wouldn’t be able to afford its mortgage if the state suspends her payments based on some clerical errors.

Black Day Care Businesses Under Siege by White Organizations

Black Business Under Siege by White Organizations

The Milwaukee Community Journal [MCJ]

VOL. XXXIV Number 7 September 30, 2008

by the MIlwaukee United Coalition of African American Day Cares

Black businesses are under attack and by all accounts, by the State of Wisconsin. Originally, now this is Back in the Day, W-2 was hailed as a success. As part of that successful Welfare to Work [W-2] program, Day Care Centers were set up to take care of all of the children so mothers could go back to work. The economy was booming, reports of labor shortages abounded, and people with modest skills could enter the workforce in an ever expanding economy. But that was then, and this is now. The economy has collapsed, the employment market has collapsed and without any of the safety nets that used to exist when unemployment was high. What to do with all the black children when nobody is there to take care of them. The mothers must continue to hustle for the few jobs that remain and children are at risk being taken care of by the street, some even say by street gangs.

The Day Care Fiscal is clearly out of hand. The State can't afford the day care, the larger agencies want the children that the smaller agencies now have and the accusations of fraud and kickbacks abound at the state level. Some say now the gangbangers, as they are being called on the street, at the State of Wisconsin fraud division are doing drive bys on day care providers attempting to apply a rules and procedures that were, according to folks in the hood, just put into place to get the state out of hot water by deliberately putting black businesses out of business. It seems the old saying, last to get hired, first to get fired applies to black business contractors with the state. The most recent incidents occurred on September 24th and 25th, when several providers reported two suspicious men coming to their facility, asking a number of questions, walking in day cares, taking attendance sheets and any other paper work they can get their hands on without warrants. All of these ambush style attacks were done in an attempt to build a case against these day care providers. Furthermore, these hired gun contractors were feeding inflammatory disinformation to certain print media about some day care providers who were no longer in business. As a result, child care provider's payments were stopped unlawfully forcing daycare providers out of business without giving them notice of the changes in procedures. It appears the State of Wisconsin is prosecuting these black businesses before they have been proven guilty of any intentional wrong doing; the word intentional is the key to fraud.

Let's analyze why the state may be operating in such a manner trying to shut down black businesses that provide a much needed service to Milwaukee? Who is going to get the children that have been abandoned by the states hasty and careless action putting children at unnecessary risk. It appears that the day care agencies that are being subjected to these cowboy style raids and investigation are of color? What's up with that?

Let's take a look. All of the closings have occurred in primarily black day care centers. The African American businesses located in impoverished neighborhoods provide a critical service to the community. They care for children whose parents are not making much more than minimum wage and in many instances use public transportation. Neighborhood daycare is cost effective for these parents. Home daycare providers go above and beyond what large centers do. A provider might find them self helping children with homework, when necessary comb and braid hair, bathe children and donate clothing. Providers know and understand the needs of their community.

While parents work, go to school and contribute to the stability of the community, local neighborhood providers ease the parent's mind by making available a safe, academic, and clean setting for the 5 - 10 hours of accessible day care. Local providers know it takes a village to raise a family.

One day care providers testimony: When I contact the director for the fraud investigations, he then informed me that the two gentlemen who came to my business said among other things said that both my facilities were closed, and he would contact me after he see’s if the investigators told their stories correctly. I’m truly appalled by their actions and allegations. I run my business legally, and now my name as a businesswoman has been slandered, because the state felt the need to investigate 200 other “urban” child cares, and not just investigate the child cares they know are defrauding the system, instead of dragging the good ones through the mud. Wisconsin must unite and pronounce that inner city children deserve tax payer dollars just like any other citizen in the State.

If the State of Wisconsin's objective is to close neighbor hood day care centers then come on out and state the purpose for such behavior. It is unfair to drag down the name of hard working people who provide a vital and viable service to their community.

Questions for the community and a just resolution to the conflict caused by the ultimate failure of W-2 and a collapsing economy: 1) The children need care and with scarce resource why do black businesses have to suffer the most; 2) The style of the raids on the providers of color suggest a coverup of activities by others, 3) Is the short fall in state revenues going to spur inappropriate and hostile action by state employees; 4) Why can't mom and pop businesses stay in business since the service is still needed; 5) Why was the daily white newspaper come to a hasty judgement with such morbid hostility to black businesses, 6) Why are community meeting rooms being denied to these day care providers. More on all of this later. Stay tuned!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

A school board member's home is bombed in Milwaukee

Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 11:30pm Isthmus Newspaper
Madison, Wisconsin

January 10, 1997

A Shameful Silence
Charles J. Sykes

A school board member's home is bombed in Milwaukee, and no one is
outraged.

We don't know for sure whether the firebombing of Milwaukee School Board
member Leon Todd's house in late December had anything to do with his
opposition to Afrocentrism. Even without the political implications,
the firebombing marked a dramatic act of violence against one of the
city's most prominent black elected officials.

So far, police haven't made any arrests, and Todd, who has been pushing
a resolution to ban the teaching of Afrocentrism in the city's schools,
cautions against rushing to any conclusions.

None of that has stopped former Ald. Michael McGee, who went on his
radio talk show two days after the bombing to applaud the attack and
warn Todd that if he "were smart, he'd get his butt out of the black
community."

"My wholehearted congratulations," McGee broadcast, "to the
guerrilla who issued a little warning shot to Todd. I know where it
came from." Describing the thugs(s) who tossed the Molotov cocktail,
which caused about $1,000 in damage, McGee said, "They are the kind of
people I would like to pin a medal of honor on."

McGee also made it clear that the firebombing may just have been the
beginning. "Its a warning," he said on his program, broadcast on
WNOV-AM. "Next time, there ain‚t going to be no warning shot."

I should make it clear that I am not a fan of Leon Todd. But it is
difficult to name another elected official who has been subjected to
more abuse than him. His crime is his opposition to a curricular fad
that Todd claims "mythologizes and falsifies the past and provides
inaccurate information."

Seldom one to mince words, Todd calls Afrocentrism "racist
pseudo-science" which aims to raise children's self-esteem, but which
contributes to widening gaps between inner-city black children and white
middle-class youngsters.

"I am concerned about the fact that we are running a dual school
system once again," he says. "One system for poor blacks, and another
for middle-class children."

At one Milwaukee school that embraces Afrocentrism, curriculum materials
flatly declare that Aristotle stole most of his ideas from Africans.
Children are also taught that Africans discovered America 3,000 years
before Columbus. Some Afrocentric courses teach children that black
Egyptians had learned to fly, using gliders for both business and
pleasure.

For Todd, all of this is cant, pure and simple. But, as he has
discovered, these matters are not about history or facts, but about
politics and inflamed emotions. He found himself at the center of what
is becoming, quite literally, a firestorm of vilification. For weeks
before the firebombing, Todd was labeled an "Uncle Tom" at public
hearings, called a traitor, and warned that opponents would "get him."

As the debate mounted in intensity, several things became clear:
There was remarkably little tolerance within the black community for
dissent, intimidation and slander could be used against anyone who broke
ranks, racial slurs and race baiting could be used with impunity, and
liberals (who profess to be troubled by the state of civility in our
society) would not lift a finger for the victim.

Few expected, however, it would go as far as it did. But the real
shock was not the bombing of Todd's house. The real shock was what came
afterward. And what did not.

Imagine for a moment that a prominent black official pushing for civil
rights was the victim of a firebombing, and that white racists went on
the air to applaud the burning. Imagine further that prominent members
of the radical right threaten the uppity official to shut up or get out
of town.

One would hope that both the hate crime and the hate speech would be
met by a howl of outrage ˜ from the black community certainly, but also
from the community as a whole, the churches, the civil rights community,
and the media.

But in Milwaukee, a prominent black official was attacked, the
bombing applauded, his life threatened, and the response has been . . .
. silence. No protests from the community or the churches. No
candlelight vigils, no community forums. Media coverage has been tepid
to nonexistent.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which originally reported McGee‚s
threats in a story on page 35, did not even editorialize about the
apparent incitement to violence for more than a week, and then in only
the most perfunctory way.

If Todd, as a black elected official, has any right at all to
independence of thought, no one is willing to stand up and say so.
So much for the celebration of diversity. The intolerance of
dissent has been paralleled by an almost limitless tolerance for
intimidation as long as it is black on black.

That silence has already sent an unmistakable message. When the
dispute over Ebonics made headlines, few black leaders were willing to
be associated with Todd's criticism of the notion that black English was
a legitimate dialect. Similarly, few leaders of the African American
community dare criticize the incompetence or corruption of Milwaukee's
Social Development Commission. White critics may say what they like,
but there are simply some things that you cannot say in Milwaukee
safely, if you are black.

In Milwaukee, everyone pretends that none of this is happening.
That way, we can keep looking the other way, hope that nothing worse
happens to Leon Todd, and try not to be ashamed.

============================================================

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

McGee applauds firebombing
He claims knowledge of attack on Todd's home

by MEG KISSINGER, Jessica McBride of the Journal Sentinel staff
Journal Sentinel staff

December 21, 1996
Edition: Final
Section: B News
Length: 484 words
Record Number: MWS96122101929

Former alderman Michael McGee said Friday that he knew where the fire-bombing of Milwaukee School Board member Leon Todd's home "came from," and he congratulated those responsible for their work

"They are the kind of people I would like to pin a medal of honor on," McGee said on "The Word Warriors," his radio show on WNOV-AM (860)

McGee and his radio show partner, Teju Ologboni, began their show by talking about Wednesday night's firebombing

The Molotov cocktail, thrown around 11 pm at the front door of Todd's home in the 3400 block of N 47th St, caused $1,000 damage No one was injured and police have no suspects in custody

Todd has been at the center of a controversy over his proposal to ban the teaching of Afrocentrism in Milwaukee Public Schools But he said Thursday night the incident didn't necessarily have anything to do with that

On Friday, McGee said: "My whole-hearted congratulations to the guerrilla who issued a little warning shot to Todd I know where it came from"

Later in the program, McGee said he was glad that the person who threw the firebomb took his advice and wore rubber gloves so that the police could not trace it

"You listened to me when I told you, `Always wear rubber gloves and wipe down your device so there can't be no trace' Just a little tip," he said

McGee told his listeners that the firebombing "needed to be done"

"It's a warning," said McGee "Next time, there ain't going to be no warning shot"

He added that if Todd "were smart, he'd get his butt out of the black community"

Police Sgt Anna Ruzinski, public information officer, said she had informed detectives about McGee's remarks Friday afternoon but did not know whether detectives plan to interview McGee

Ruzinski said Friday afternoon that there were no suspects and "no new leads" in the firebombing of Todd's home

Todd was unavailable for comment on McGee's remarks

Ruzinski said she was aware of no connection between the device used in the Todd firebombing and Molotov cocktails tossed against the Korean-owned Beauty Island, 5241 W Fond du Lac Ave, last spring

McGee had made remarks on his radio show concerning protests at the beauty supply shop, including instructions on how to build a Molotov cocktail There were at least three small arson fires at Beauty Island last spring, the target of a yearlong protest by some members of the African-American community

One of those fires broke out just days after McGee warned of further reprisals against the beauty supply store

Caption:
Photo 1
Todd
Photo 2
McGee

--------------------------------------------

Resolved: That in 1997, they'll get it right

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

January 1, 1997

The start of a new year prompts many people to make resolutions: to lose
weight, to quit smoking, to spend more quality time with the kids, whatever.
Private citizens generally know what's best for themselves, but people in
the public eye, in their ceaseless quest to do better by those who look up
to them, may need some friendly, practical advice. Herewith, then, are
suggested New Year's resolutions for some more-or-less famous men and women:

..............

Michael McGee: to procure a very large megaphone -- not to more loudly
broadcast your goofy ideas, but to harmlessly dissipate all the hot air and
blather you generate, like the praise you offered to whoever firebombed the
home of School Board member Leon Todd.

..............

--------------------------------------------
Lighting a fire under a few explosive issues

McCann Online
Dennis McCann
April 30, 1997

Act III, after which I will bow if you applaud.

You can call it curious that Mayor John "Casey Jones" Norquist would court his old enemy, Michael McGee, to advance the cause of light rail, but I call it brilliant strategy.

When Norquist starts throwing burning tires on Waukesha County highways -- and in the mood he's in, don't bet against it -- McGee will get all the blame.

Bow. Hey, come on. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=168568074615

Monday, January 25, 2010

Journal Post Bogus Headlines Denying the Realities of Hypersegregation

Life in Milwaukee, black and white

Recent study denies realities of race here

By MARC V. LEVINE, GREGORY D. SQUIRES and JOHN F. ZIP

Posted: Jan. 18, 2003

What a welcome headline for Milwaukee, as we approach celebration of the Martin Luther King holiday: "Study explodes myth of area's hypersegregation."

For three days last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provided unprecedented coverage of a short report by the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee's Employment and Training Institute claiming that new ways of measuring racial patterns in housing prove that Milwaukee is not as segregated as virtually all researchers contend.

Too bad the headline is dead wrong. The institute's report is a blend of shoddy research and specious analysis. The fact of the matter, sadly, is that Milwaukee is as segregated as national studies continually show and that racial inequality remains firmly entrenched in our social landscape.

Putting aside for the moment the methods used in the report, its authors' conclusions hardly support the sensationalistic headlines. The report shows that only 9% of metro Milwaukee's population - and only 5% of the region's whites - live on so-called "integrated" blocks.

Five percent. Does that statistic justify the conclusion: "Study explodes myth of area's hypersegregation?" On the contrary, by any reasonable analysis, it proves that Milwaukee is hypersegregated.

But even to come up with this measure, the Employment and Training Institute committed several methodological and conceptual errors. The authors' chief contention is that the dissimilarity index - the primary tool used by social scientists to measure racial segregation in metropolitan areas - is racially biased, advocates the dispersal of blacks from majority-minority neighborhoods and produces unfair rankings of metro areas.

This is nonsense. The dissimilarity index is not, as the institute implies, some sort of Jim-Crow-era, white-domination tool, with an agenda of diluting black political power or promoting mass population dispersal.

Rather, it is simply a measure that provides a statistical estimate of the extent to which the racial composition of neighborhoods resembles the racial composition of a metropolitan area.

Seems intuitive, doesn't it? If a metro area is 15% black, but most blacks live in neighborhoods that are 80% black, most observers would agree that things look a bit more segregated than if most blacks lived in neighborhoods that were 50% black. In this fashion, the dissimilarity index gives us a systematic way to compare levels of segregation in metro areas with different proportions of racial minorities.

But the dissimilarity index is just one tool researchers have used to compare levels of segregation in various metro areas. The U.S. Bureau of the Census, for example, recently issued a report comparing segregation in the nation's largest metropolitan areas using five different measures (dissimilarity, isolation, exposure, centralization and spatial proximity).

The bureau's finding, when all measures are taken into account: Milwaukee ranks as the nation's most segregated metropolitan area.

Although the Employment and Training Institute authors caution against using any one index to rank metro areas by level of segregation, they do exactly that. But their measure of "integration" - which calculates the percentage of the metro area population living on blocks that are at least 20% white and 20% black - is deceptive for three reasons.

First, the 20% figure is arbitrary. Why is a block with 20% "others" considered integrated? Why not 10, 25 or 50%? ETI has simply chosen a number out of thin air, with no methodological justification. By what logic, in a metropolitan Milwaukee that is 16% African-American, does the report come to the conclusion that a block 79% black is "integrated?"

Second, the report claims that examining racial patterns at the block level yields radically new findings on levels of segregation. It doesn't: About the same percentage of metro Milwaukee residents live in 20/20 census tracts as they do on blocks. Contrary to the hyped claims, looking at blocks does not change the analysis. This is a complete red herring, designed to give an air of originality to the report.

But setting an arbitrary 20% threshold for integration does distort things because, by definition, metro areas with smaller black populations simply do not have enough blacks living there to meet the 20% threshold. Thus, using that measure, a metro area with a 19% black population, where every block was 19% black (perfect integration using the "dissimilarity index"), would be more segregated than a metro area that was 40% black, containing one block meeting the 20/20 criterion and all the rest highly segregated.

Clearly, this conclusion would be ludicrous.

Finally, the study's measure is flawed, because the authors are unable to distinguish "integrated" areas from neighborhoods in racial transition. Almost all of the blocks designated by ETI as "integrated" in Milwaukee are on the west and northwest side of the city.

Between 1990 and 2000, the white population declined by 53,000, and the black population grew by more than 41,000 in these neighborhoods; the black percentage of the population grew from 36.9% to 56.7%. This doesn't look like integration - it looks like the latest phase of white flight and resegregation in Milwaukee.

If the trends of the 1990s continue, by 2010 these neighborhoods will be 77% black. But under the study's criteria, these neighborhoods will still be "integrated."

There are countless other problems with the report.

It fails to properly analyze the place of suburban exclusion in Milwaukee's racial segregation: Milwaukee ranks near the bottom among large metropolitan areas in the percentage of blacks living in the suburbs.
The report badly misanalyzes the issue of "majority-minority" neighborhoods, failing to distinguish between such neighborhoods that are created mainly by choice (middle- and upper-class black communities such as Prince George's County, Maryland) and "majority-minority" neighborhoods that are created because of discrimination and social inequality (such as Metcalfe Park and much of Milwaukee's inner city).

As the Journal Sentinel said in an editorial last week: "Yes, many African-Americans choose to live in the black community, but often because they feel that white neighborhoods are too hostile."

Contrary to the report, no credible social scientist has claimed that black neighborhoods are problematic because they are black neighborhoods. But a wealth of research has demonstrated that, as a result of discriminatory treatment by a variety of public and private institutions, minority communities are often served by troubled public schools, provide fewer job opportunities and offer fewer recreational facilities.

To understand these neighborhood effects requires neighborhood level - or census tract - data. Block level data is useful, but not for revealing the costs of racial segregation. The report completely ignores the economic and social contexts of poverty, joblessness and crime that give segregation its bite in Milwaukee and elsewhere.

Finally, efforts to help at least some families move from low-income, minority communities in inner cities to outlying middle income and predominantly white communities are not designed to weaken minority political power but rather to improve the life chances of minority families.

Early returns from the Gautreaux program in Chicago and the Department of Housing and Urban Development's "Moving to Opportunity" program in five large cities indicate that these efforts are in fact delivering the desired goods. Would ETI have us pull back from these efforts to break down the walls of suburban exclusion?

By every meaningful measure, Milwaukee remains highly segregated, with serious social and economic consequences, a point that even the report does not contest.

Whether Milwaukee ranks higher or lower than Salt Lake City on some index is far less important than the fact that Milwaukee and many other cities face an undeniable crisis of racial inequality. Black unemployment and poverty in Milwaukee are more than triple the white rate, and in many predominantly black inner city neighborhoods, over half the working-age population is unemployed or out of the labor force. These are the realities of segregation in Milwaukee that the report whitewashes.

Bad research often leads to bad policy. We can only hope that celebration of the flawed ETI report by Mayor John Norquist and others quoted in the Journal Sentinel articles will not discourage efforts to alleviate Milwaukee's long-standing segregation.

Today, more than ever, Milwaukee needs new and innovative strategies to reduce appalling racial gaps in poverty, income and employment; to break down barriers that still exist to equal housing opportunity; and to improve conditions in the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Misleading newspaper headlines based on specious research may make us feel better about things for a while; but in the end, as a community, we need to stop pretending things are getting better and come up with strategies to make them better.

Marc V. Levine is professor of urban studies and history and director of the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Gregory D. Squires, a former UWM faculty member, is professor and chair of the department of sociology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. John F. Zipp, also a former UWM faculty member, is professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio.

http://www3.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=111459

Leon Todd

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Wisconsin Day Care Centers: Fraud or Honest Mistakes?

Issue of the Week: Demonizing Day Care Providers

Is the Doyle Administration Destroying Inner-City Businesses?

Black Day Care Businesses Under Siege by White Organizations

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

A school board member's home is bombed in Milwaukee

A school board member's home is bombed in Milwaukee

Monday, January 25, 2010

Journal Post Bogus Headlines Denying the Realities of Hypersegregation

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