By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter
MADISON – More trouble for the troubled Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors.
This time the embattled board is accused of engaging in the practice of “walking quorums,” an exercise in secretive government, according to a conservative, open-government advocacy organization taking aim at what some charge is a county board gone wild.
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The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, or WILL, has filed a complaint alleging members of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors once again violated the state’s open meetings law.
In a statement released Monday, WILL said news reports and news releases over the past two days have “indicated” 13 county supervisors, including Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic, “engaged in a series of small secret meeting in order to get enough supervisors to agree to fire Corporation Council Kimberly Walker.”
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“Such small meetings, designed to evade the requirements of the Open Meetings Law, are known as ‘walking quorums,’ and are illegal because they permit a governing body to conduct business without having to give the public notice and hold debate in open session,” WILL asserts in its statement.
On Thursday, the board voted 13-5, without debate, to remove Walker, who in 2011 was appointed by Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele. The action was viewed as vindictive and petty by critics, who saw the firing as retribution after the Republican-controlled Legislature moved through a bill reducing the board’s power and slicing its budget. Some, including Walker, have charged the firing was racially motivated. The corporation counsel is black. In a statement, the NAACP said it objected to the board’s action, calling it a “maneuver that appears to be based on arbitrariness and a political agenda.”
WILL is filing the complaint on behalf of Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander, who has publicly discussed the board’s behind-closed-doors activities leading up to the no-debate vote on the corporation counsel. In a statement last week, Alexander said county board members have been “conspiring for weeks to forcibly dismiss” Walker.
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