Tonight on "Here and Now," a first look at Governor Walker's
plan to close the Lincoln Hills juvenile facility.
After that, a closer look at the science of this deep freeze.
State Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet is here.
And an inside look at a complaint filed over the Madison DMV.
It's "Here and Now" for January 5.
- Funding for "Here and Now" is provided, in part,
by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- In our first look tonight, Governor Scott Walker has
announced plans to close Wisconsin's current juvenile
correctional facilities and open regional facilities instead.
Late this week, the governor said he would close
Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, establish five regional juvenile
facilities across Wisconsin, make the juvenile prison an
adult medium security institution and expand treatment
services at Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center.
The cost of building the new facilities would be roughly $80
million according to the governor's office.
This plan has been met with praise and criticism.
Milwaukee's State Senator Democrat Lena Taylor weighs in
now with her reaction.
Thanks very much for being here. - Thank you for having me.
- What is your response to the governor's call to close Lincoln
Hills and Copper Lake?
- I mean, very candidly, it's a day late and a dollar short.
The governor had an opportunity to do something in his budget
that shows that he wanted to prioritize stopping inhumane
treatment of young people.
He did not.
He did not even bring us up to the minimum standards of what we needed to do.
And a day-- you know, a day late because the governor has
known since at least 2012, I believe it was that the judge
gave a letter to the governor telling him that there was a
problem in the juvenile facilities.
So, you know, am I glad that the governor realizes that he has
messed up and his administration has badly managed the criminal
justice system, especially for juveniles?
I am.
- Now, Milwaukee Democratic State Representative Evan Goyke
is commending this move, calling it exciting progress in
reforming Wisconsin's correction system,
and during a recent presentation introduced a bill which he says
first produced many of the changes moving forward now.
So certainly some people, including Democrats,
are applauding this move.
What about that?
- I think it really is not some-thing that we should applaud.
First of all, we're going to do something.
Why are we putting off today -- putting it off to tomorrow what
we can do today?
And so I don't find it exciting when we're not addressing the
issue that needs to be done right away,
which is to give Milwaukee County authority in order to be
able to have an institution that they can have there in Milwaukee County.
And why must it be somewhere else other than Milwaukee County
for the youth to be cared for?
So if we were dealing with the issue immediately,
I could give praise, Frederica.
But that's not what we're doing.
We're putting it off until 2019
and we're doing nothing right now.
- Now, I understand that the governor has said that he is
open to moving that date up.
So that's something, perhaps, of some compromise
that you can look to.
- That is possible, as well as the governor said he may close
Lincoln Hills if you look at his press release completely.
He does not say I shall.
And then, even more importantly,
I think we need to do something immediately.
Right now there are children there and they're being harmed.
And the conditions are such that individuals who are working,
who are correctional officers, are not well-trained.
They're working hours that are unreasonable.
It's an unsafe environment for both workers
and, I would argue, for individuals there.
- But if you were to immediately close
these juvenile institutions, what would your answer--
Where would they go immediately?
- So the first thing I'm saying is not even necessarily a
shutdown today immediately, but I'm saying you have to start
with giving the county that most of the juveniles come from to at
least have authority to be able to build the kind of facility
that they need to house their young people.
They've asked for it.
Why can County Executive Abele's request to be able to do that
not be honored?
- Getting into that piece a little bit,
we have not very much time left unfortunately but these five
regional juvenile institutions that are proposed in this plan.
- Yes. Those five.
Milwaukee could be one, but we still would have to have the
authority to do that, of which the county executive
has asked for since at least 2016
and has not gotten a response from the governor.
I put it in a motion in the budget and it was not done.
I do like the concept.
This is the same thing that Representative Tamara Grigsby
and I asked for years ago during the Finance Committee when we
first said also that we should consider putting the juvenile
facility back in DHS or in DCF.
So I believe that there are some things the governor could do
right away to begin to address the issue.
I don't believe putting it off to 2019
is something he should be applauded for.
I think he could give Milwaukee County authority and most
importantly he could do training and staffing to be able to help.
- All right. We need to leave it there.
Senator Lena Taylor, thanks very much for joining us on this.
- Thank you for having me.
- We move now from state capitol politics to the race for
state Supreme Court and our series of interviews with
candidates running in the February primary.
Candidate Tim Burns and candidate Michael Screnock have
appeared in recent programs.
Tonight we speak with Rebecca Dallet.
Judge Dallet has presided as a Milwaukee County Judge since her
election in 2008.
Prior to that, she spent 11 years as an assistant district
attorney in Milwaukee County.
I spoke to Judge Dallet earlier.
Judge Dallet, thanks very much for joining us.
- Thank you for having me.
- Well, first, of course, we just want to ask why are you
running for Supreme Court justice?
- I'm running for Supreme Court justice, Frederica,
because our rights are under attack, our civil rights.
Every day, tweet by tweet.
Our right to clean air and water.
Our right to equal protection, women's rights.
And we've got a broken Supreme Court.
And what we need is someone with experience and values to stand
up and repair that court.
I have been a judge for a decade,
a prosecutor for more than a decade,
really fighting for our rights in court.
And I want to continue that fight on our Supreme Court.
- Why do you believe that you would be the best
among the candidates?
- Well, I really do think it comes down to experience.
I have been, as I said, a prosecutor.
I prosecuted sexual predator cases in two counties.
And now as a judge for almost a decade, I have heard 10,
000 cases, 230 jury trials, experience that is really
unparalleled between me and my opponents.
And experience matters.
I hear the day-to-day struggles Wisconsinites face.
I see moms like me struggling to make ends meet,
yet still losing their houses.
I see communities ravaged by our opioid crisis, by gun violence.
And I see our neighbors who are trying to get back on the right
track, yet trapped in a criminal justice system
that needs some reform.
And this kind of experience matters.
This is experience that matters in terms of protecting our
values and in terms of advancing policies that will level the
playing field.
- Now, Judge Screnock says that the role of the high court is to
interpret and apply the law and not to,
"legislate from the bench." He tells me that you do not share
that view.
What is your view, your so-called judicial philosophy?
One of activism to enact social or political change or one of
restraint?
- Well, the job of a judge, as I do it every day,
is to apply the law.
Understanding that the law involves our constitution and
also involves the rights that we all care about and the rights
that make Wisconsin great and those are the things that I hold
dear and will protect, as I have,
for my service in our courts.
- Well, is that legislating from the bench,
as Judge Screnock would suggest?
- Well, we have our roles as judges.
We are not a legislature.
But we also have a duty to uphold the Constitution of both
the United States and Wisconsin.
And when that Constitution has been violated,
that's when we are a check on those legislators.
- And so what's your reaction to Judge Screnock saying that
you do not share his view of this just interpreting and
applying the law as written?
- Well, my response to that is that I-- again,
I go back to the experience that I have had every day in our
courts.
I have been working as a judge for almost a decade,
which is a very long time, much longer than my one opponent who
is not a judge and Judge Screnock,
and really I know what it's like every day to look at the facts,
to apply the law and to reach decisions that are fair and just
and to make sure that we have a level playing field
for everyone in our state.
- Now, another of your challengers running for the seat
openly brings his progressive politics to the race and says
that it is a fairytale that Wisconsin
justices are apolitical.
What's your response to that?
- I go back to the fact that the two things that matter in
this race are values and experience.
And I am the only candidate that has both of those.
The values that we need to protect the things we hold dear,
the things we-- that we care about that make our state great
and the experience to actually stand up and protect those
rights.
- What's your position on whether Wisconsin justices
should have to recuse themselves from cases involving those who
give them money during campaigns?
- I feel very strongly that we need a strong recusal rule in
our state.
We need to be confident in our courts.
The fact that millions of dollars were spent on buying a
justice or justice in the past, where justices did then not
recuse themselves when that money was sitting in front of
them as a party in the case.
That is a symptom of a broken system.
And I feel strongly we should have a recusal rule in the
state.
- So even though under current rules you would not be required
to recuse, would you in those cases if someone came before you
that had contributed to your campaign?
- Where there are massive amounts of money spent on a
candidate, absolutely there should be recusal of that
candidate to make sure that everyone understands that our
courts are fair and places where people can get justice.
- So interestingly you said when there are massive amounts
of money, which of course there's been a lot of money in
these court campaigns, but what's the definition of that for you?
- Well, we need to have a hearing.
That's the first thing we need to do.
And there was a petition put forward by judges to have a
hearing in front of the Supreme Court to let's talk about what
that means, exactly what you're asking.
And instead of having a hearing, the Supreme Court refused to
have a hearing and then the Supreme Court put those hearings
in secret.
And now those hearings, those rule hearings that used to be
public are no longer public.
So we've got to start by having a hearing.
Let's have input from the people in our community who care.
- Very quickly, lastly, which sitting Wisconsin Supreme Court
justice do you most admire?
- I most admire Ann Walsh-Bradley.
I admire her ability to make sure we keep the courts fair and
just in upholding the law.
And I admire her.
I also want to add as well I've gotten great support from judges
across the state, over 175 at this point,
and I think that that is something that speaks highly to
my being the most qualified for this position.
- Thank you very much. - Thank you.
- The primary election for the state Supreme Court race
is February 20.
A January 19 deadline may force Congressional leaders to avert a
government shutdown with a stop gap funding measure.
Both sides met this week for budget talks
with the White House.
Following the meeting, Republican leaders and the
president released a joint statement saying, in part,
"It is important that we achieve a two-year agreement that funds
our troops and provides for our national security and other
critical functions of the federal government.
It also remains important that members of Congress do not hold
funding for our troops hostage for immigration policy." For his
part in Madison this week, Democratic U.S.
Representative Mark Pocan expressed his dismay over the
process and its prospects.
- We've got a lot of real work to do.
Unfortunately, they've still allowed the Tea Party to have
the keys to their Shriner car they seem to be driving around.
Lately the defense hawks have been a problem because they're
trying to fully fund defense spending but not the rest of the
spending.
And of course, we're not going to go for that as Democrats
because all they're going to do is trash spending
that helps people in communities across the country.
- The U.S. House returns for its session next week.
Bomb cyclone, polar vortex.
It is freaking freezing outside.
Tonight we take a closer look at the science behind this deep
freeze.
UW-Madison Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
Jonathan Martin is here.
Thanks very much for being here.
- It's my pleasure.
- So exactly what is a bomb cyclone?
- It is sort of a nerdy word that was coined maybe 40 or so
years ago.
Maybe even older than that by somebody.
It got to be in general parlance around 1980 to explain or
describe cyclones, mid-latitude storms that develop really rapidly.
The way we measure their development is their minimum sea level pressure.
So a bomb storm is one where the sea level pressure
drops through the floor at a really rapid rate,
24 or so millibars in one day.
And that represents about 2% of the total column atmospheric
mass in one day disappears from that storm.
- How unusual is it?
- We probably get about two dozen of those kinds of
intensively-- rapidly intensifying storms around the
whole northern hemisphere each winter.
So they're not that unusual.
- And that's what's happening on the east coast?
- That's exactly what happened on the east coast.
This one was rather extreme in terms of how fast it developed.
It might be-- instead of one in two dozen,
it may be one in five type of storm per winter.
So it's really an exceptional event.
- And that is expected to be followed by a polar vortex?
- By very, very cold air.
Polar vortex is a word that a few years ago got into the
popular lexicon as a result of a cold winter.
It's a meteorological term that describes the tendency for
circulation around the pole at very high altitudes, 10,
20 miles above the ground.
So polar vortex now seems to mean cold air.
On the west side of such an intense cyclone,
where the circulation is counter-clockwise,
you can't help but drag colder air from higher latitudes down southward.
-That's what we're in right now?
- That's exactly what we're in. - And the trajectory of that?
Are we supposed to be in it for a while?
- Few more days, I think.
The extreme, waking up every morning to below zero temperatures,
a few more days of that.
And then we'll get back a little bit to normal.
There's no way to tell whether we'll see it again this winter,
but we may.
- Why is it happening?
- That is a great question.
It's the kind of question that gets answered in research that
one does after the event occurs.
So I'm currently beginning to think about answers
to that question.
One of the ingredients to get us really cold
is a high amplitude flow.
Very strong, north-south meanders of the atmospheric flow
at all levels, including the jet stream.
That's at about six miles above the ground.
That occurs every once in a while during the cold season,
but it isn't something that you can see coming
20 days in advance.
We did know this cold snap was coming around Christmastime or
even before that.
So 10 days or so in advance, the forecasts were really good for
prolonged cold snap in the eastern part of North America.
But longer than that is a difficult task.
- Does this have anything to do with climate change?
- My view on that is I'm rather skeptical that individual cold
snaps like this one are directly related to the broad background
warming that's going on around the planet.
And this is a difficult subject to sort of broach in some ways.
There's no doubt that such a thing is occurring.
The planet is warming up at a very slow but steady rate and
there are many ways to see that.
Whether or not it's cold in your backyard is not really
discern ably attributable to that change on a case-by-case basis.
I think that's safe to say for this one.
- What's hard to understand is that as the globe heats up,
we experience these kind of things like polar vortexes.
- Right. Right.
One of the interesting theories out there right now,
we're debating it, the community of scientists I'm involved in
is debating this rather haughtily.
There are sometimes some pretty strong opinions out there on
some of these issues.
But one thing that may occur when the planet warms up,
we know for sure the ice at high latitudes
gets weaker and thinner.
That might add some extra warming to the lower part of the
atmosphere in late fall, early winter that wasn't there 50 or
100 years ago.
That might have a tendency to increase the frequency of some
of these high amplitude flows, these strong north-south
variations.
If that's the case, because it still gets cold at the North Pole.
The sun is down for six months at the North Pole.
You're not going to change that.
You're still going to produce cold air up there.
If you can tap it with one of these excursions pole-ward of
the jet stream and drag it southward,
as is happening right now, with greater frequency,
then one might actually, somewhat paradoxically,
in a warmer planet, if the amplitude of the jet stream is
intensified because of that, I don't think the evidence is in
on that question but if that's true,
then we might have a higher frequency
of some of these cold snaps.
But there's no way to tell where they're going to hit.
Right now it's unusually warm in Russia.
Moscow's enjoying a really warm December and January.
Of course it's frigid over our part of the world.
- Jonathan Martin, thanks very much for your explanation.
- You bet. Thank you.
- The state of Wisconsin's decision to combine and relocate
two Division of Motor Vehicles locations in Madison has sparked
a federal civil rights complaint on the city's part.
In tonight's inside look, why the DMV move has prompted the
complaint, which states in part, "...the decision to combine and
move the west side DMV service centers to an area that is
relatively inaccessible by transit disparately impacts
racial minority residents who rely primarily on transit to
reach the DMV for services, including, for example,
obtaining a driver's license for the first time or obtaining a
voter ID." The current DMV main location is located on a busy
bus route as is a renewal location.
Both are to be combined at a farther out site,
less accessible by bus.
Here's what Madison Mayor Paul Soglin had to say.
- We are hopeful that the U.S.
Department of Transportation will recognize the failure of
our state's Department of Transportation and will step in
and order changes to be made so that whether it is getting
identification, whether it is getting a driver's license or a
license plate, we will see to it that all the people in our
community can utilize government services for which they pay.
- The League of Women Voters also spoke out on the DMV move
and the resulting complaint.
President of the Dane County League, Brook Soltvedt,
joins us next.
But first, the State Department of Transportation offered this
statement in declining our invitation to appear.
"The Madison West DMV Service Center is a new,
more spacious location with free parking close to the building
entrance.
Customers of the location will be served by bus routes,
Madison Metro's route 15 and route 73.
Customers have multiple bus options to access either Madison
West or East DMV offices." Now to Brook Soltvedt.
Thanks very much for being here.
- Thank you for inviting me.
- Describe why people taking the bus will have problems
accessing that new location?
Because, as we just heard from the DOT,
they say there are two routes that serve it.
- Not that it is utterly inaccessible,
but from most locations, the time that it would take you to
get to this new location would be significantly increased and
very often includes a lengthy distance that would have to be
walked.
The busiest bus route or most direct bus route only operates
during the peak hours, so that if you could get there early in
the morning, you might not transact your business in time
to take that short route back.
Same at the end of the day.
- Why was a complaint filed with the federal office of civil
rights?
Does it have to do with federal funding coming into Wisconsin?
- It does.
I'm not a civil rights attorney, but my understanding is that it
is the federal Department of Transportation that can control
what the state does.
- Now, the complaint states that it's unclear whether the
Wisconsin DOT intentionally chose a less transit-friendly
location.
What's your take?
- I have no idea.
I don't want to impugn anybody's motives on this.
But our concern is that very often the state in making
decisions doesn't consider the impact that it will have on our
less well-situated citizens.
- Did this relocation surprise you and others?
- I learned about it in August when I read about it in the
State Journal and that's when our league started advocating on
behalf of the people that we knew would be impacted.
- And have you heard from customers who use these DMV locations?
- No, because I don't think it's been really all that
well-advertised.
Until very recently there was nothing on their website.
Unless you happened to see that article in the paper this
summer, most people probably had no idea it was coming.
- And so when you learned of it in August and began advocating
and kind of got more involved, what was your initial reaction
to that relocation?
- The very first thing I thought of was what about all
the people we know who need to get to the DMV to get an ID for
voting.
One of the things about the voter ID law that was passed
recently is it's one of the most stringent in the country.
There are very few IDs that a citizen can use to vote.
Almost all of them require going to the DMV.
It equates your right to vote with the ability to get to a
DMV.
So when you then make getting to the DMV more inaccessible to the
very people who have-- are least likely to have a driver
license or voter ID or Wisconsin ID card, it's a big problem.
- Has there been any preliminary reaction to your
knowledge from the feds concerning this complaint?
- It was just filed two days ago,
so as far as I know there's been no response.
- Do you know whether or not there's any kind of precedent
for this kind of complaint calling for states
or the feds to kind of not make these relocations?
- Yes.
In Alabama in fact, I believe it was several years ago,
maybe 2015, Alabama set about-- after passing a very stringent
voter ID law, went about systematically closing all the
DMV offices in the predominantly black counties.
But they left them in the predominantly white counties.
And a civil rights complaint was filed and they were forced to
reopen DMV facilities.
- Is there any sense that there will be kind of a different
reaction under a different federal administration?
- I can't say that.
I don't know.
- And so the best outcome in your mind would be?
- I would like to see the DMV open another service office
similar to what we currently have on Odana Road that would be
open more accessible hours as that one is.
That's another issue that wasn't addressed in this complaint,
is the fact that that Odana Road office has later hours in the
evening and is open most of the day on Saturday.
Something that would be accessible to voters,
low-income, racial minority, transit-dependent voters,
to be able to get services, including voter ID.
- All right. We need to leave it there.
Brook Soltvedt, thanks very much.
- Thank you very much for your interest.
- That is all for tonight's program.
I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Have a great weekend.
- Funding for "Here and Now" is provided, in part,
by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.