We did what we could in the media, responsibly, but all after the fact. I don’t think how the recalls were handled was what you call responsible journalism, more steam-roll journalism seeking action in the context of “the big story.”

The “felons voting” and election commission investigations have been likewise self-fulfilling, but in a different way — this time with solutions in search of problems that were never found.

The fact is that the board was told that it would save money in the long run.

But you are right — we pointed out all the details before we were even Watchdog Milwaukee. THE PRESS was a great paper but the internet is where it’s at.

There were many responsible supervisors who were lied to by Dobbert and the audit department. Jim was one of them.

At ThePRESS, and at WatchdogMilwaukee, we reported what did happen, and were the first media to pinpoint Dobbert’s role in the scandal. It was the most responsible thing to do, though it was after the fact. Much of the coverage, by TV media in particular, was highly irresponsible. Actions by many players involved, CRG included, also irresponsible in the fallout of the scandal. As a result, the losers in the end were the people of Milwaukee County.

Should we blame the media? Better media might have helped, of course, but a reporter could have done Pulitzer Prize winning work and still had little impact because people are getting their news from Fox. As it was, it was months before Bruce Murphy got other media to pay attention to the story.

A diligent media would have reported it accurately. It would have exposed CRG as a partisan shill group and would have pointed out that Supervisors had a choice — act on the advice on a trusted adminstrator who had claimed to have done the research, or micromanaged every detail and pretended to have been experts.

A diligent media would have focused their attention on the administrators who misled the board — specifically the administrator who was later convicted and went to jail.

A diligent media would never have claimed that the Exec was to receive a million dollar pension when it never happened and a diligent media would have praised those elected officials who waived the part that would have been enriching for them and given some analysis to whether there was parity in pre-vote pensions for junior and senior elected officials (there was not).

Further, a diligent media would focus on what has been done by the current Exec’s adminstration to fix the problems.

Sadly, we don’t have a diligent media.