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Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it!
www.AnySoldier.com
Posted on 04/11/2008 7:54:16 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
By the time Ald. Michael McGee's term ends Monday, city taxpayers will have paid him more than $67,000 while he has been sitting in jail, city records show.
That includes a car allowance of more than $3,000 - even though McGee hasn't been able to drive in jail and couldn't legally drive before his arrest.
And when he turns 60, McGee also will be eligible for a small city pension, based on his elected service and a previous job with the Milwaukee Public Schools.
McGee, 38, was arrested last Memorial Day and has been charged with shaking down business owners for bribes in exchange for city licenses, with buying votes and with conspiring to have a man beaten. He is in the Waukesha County Jail, awaiting a state trial next month and a federal trial in June.
Because he has not been convicted, McGee has remained on the payroll as an alderman. But his ability to serve from jail has been sharply limited. He has been unable to attend Common Council meetings.
Most of McGee's aldermanic work has consisted of dealing with constituent matters through telephone conversations with his aide, Mary Fitzgerald. He tried to use that power to reject a permit for a block party organized by key figures in the case against him, but Council President Willie Hines Jr. helped the organizers find a way to hold the party anyway.
Also by working with city staffers over the phone, McGee has introduced four development-related measures, all requested by the Department of City Development. Three have been adopted and one remains in committee.
Aldermen refused to consider McGee's three budget amendments, which sought to shift funding from the Police Department to citizen groups such as his Rapid Response Team. The FBI has raided the team's offices, using a search warrant that alleged McGee used the group in his shakedowns.
Nonetheless, McGee has continued to receive a biweekly salary of $2,750, before taxes and deductions. From May 28 through Monday, that will amount to $63,580, according to figures supplied by City Clerk Ron Leonhardt.
All aldermen also receive a car allowance, which rose from $325 a month last year to $337 a month this year. They are not required to supply any details of mileage or other auto expenses. In McGee's case, seven months at the 2007 rate and slightly less than 3.5 months at the 2008 rate would total $3,443, Leonhardt's figures show.
Even before he was arrested, McGee couldn't legally drive. In June 2006, the state Department of Transportation revoked his driver's license, after a fraud probe spurred by the revelation that his birth name was Michael I. Jackson. The state had revoked a license under the Jackson name in March 2000, but he obtained a license under the McGee name that year.
Allowance review sought
Hines and Aldermen Bob Donovan and Tony Zielinski said the council should consider changing the rules for the car allowance, although Hines stressed that McGee's case was unique.
"I don't think it was ever intended for any elected official to be behind bars and unable to serve," Hines said.
Still, Hines said, aldermen should look at whether the allowance should be paid to someone who doesn't hold a valid license.
Donovan and Zielinski said it was inappropriate for McGee to receive the allowance. Donovan said he would be willing to sponsor legislation to change the rules if needed.
But Donovan added that McGee must be considered innocent until proven guilty. Donovan himself was indicted on a federal fraud charge in 2005, but he agreed to pay a $2,500 fine as part of a deal to drop the charge.
When McGee turns 60, in October 2029, he will be eligible for a city pension of just under $8,000 a year, based on his local government service to date.
The pension formula is to average the three highest years of a city employee's annual salary, multiply the average by total years of service and then multiply the result by 2%.
Over the past three years, aldermanic pay has risen from $67,448 to $69,543 to $71,702, for an average of $69,564.
Before his 2004 election, McGee also worked for MPS as a 30-hour-a-week paraprofessional educational assistant, from November 1997 to December 1999, MPS spokesman Phil Harris said.
That gives McGee the equivalent of 5.7 years of full-time service, which means his pension would be about $7,913 a year.
The pension would rise if McGee ever holds another city or MPS job.
bump
It’s great work if you can find it.
That would include Washington & Waukesha counties. In my opinion two of the most conservative counties in the U.S.
I agree with acw011. Let me suggest he follow area:
South of Hwy 60 and East of Hwy 26.
AND a 15 miles circle around “Sandal City” aka Madison.
Just kidding. I'm sick of the southern lib-belt hammering the rest of us.
Love da Nort
But,, Waukesha was the anchor in the recent SC election.
I live in Madison, you don’t know the half of dealing with the lib belt.
My family all lives in Wash/Wauk county, so that keeps me going.
Madison is utterly lost. Most of Milwaukee is as well, it's the rest of the state that helps defeat this poison. Without Waukesha we are lost in statewide elections.
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Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it!
www.AnySoldier.com
More proof that the rat is a loathsome creature.
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