As a reporter, I’ve labored under some pretty strained, contentious or just downright unpleasant relationships with officials and law enforcement before. Oftentimes, the farther out in the sticks you go, the more mistrustful folk seem to get of someone toting a notepad, microphone or camera. That’s why it always comes as a breath of fresh air when somebody gets it. I’ve said it beforethat I think Dodge County Sheriff Todd Nehls is a sharp guy, and now I think he gets it, too.

As far as I know, the column he emailed out to a whole bunch of media outlets the other day was completely unprompted. While the title he used, “Media – a Necessary Partner” doesn’t exactly conjure up thoughts of hot cocoa and warm embraces, I did think it was an interesting enough read to warrant posting here. I also feel obligated to respond. In brief, thanks Sheriff Nehls for not treating us like lepers! You’re something of a rarity and always a pleasure to work with.

“From the Office of the Sheriff:

“Media – a Necessary Partner”

 

Not a week goes by without a citizen commenting to me on the county being in the news. I do not have to track when a county story is featured on television as many of you will let me know about it in the morning. Contrary to many, our intent is not to seek media fame for what we do.  What I do feel is important is that citizens know what is going on within the county they are raising their families.  That means both the good and bad.   

One of my first initiatives after being elected was to share with the media our (Sheriff’s Dept) daily logs.  The log is a document that was for internal use only. It listed all our calls for service, the nature of the call, and names of those involved, to include arrests. The daily log they get is unedited. The media is instructed, and has been very good about editing names of minors as well as other sensitive information. The document is a public record anyway and we would have to release it if asked. Other items classified as a public record include criminal reports after prosecution, 911 calls, and booking photos. So, in early 2003 you started reading more about what was really going on in the county. Crime did not sky rocket overnight, we just started telling you what was going on while you slept.

We have developed a great relationship with not only our local media but state-wide outlets as well. My phone starts ringing around 6:00 a.m. after the daily log of the past 24-hours is emailed to the media. Radio wants a quick sound bit and print media wants more specifics for their website.  For larger cases, the television media call mid-morning to tell you they are on their way up to talk about a certain incident.  In my seven years, I have never denied a media outlet an interview. I may have delegated the interview to another but we never say no. I am available 24/7/365 and trust me they know that!

 The media is much too important to us in their role of communicating with you. Whether it is breaking in on John and Bill in the morning to warn you about a bad crash and detour, to asking the television stations to highlight a photo of an armed robbery suspect, they are always available and have never said no.  I am proud of the mutual respect and trust we have for one another. Most news stories are solicited from the media vs. the department sending out a media release.              

I understand that at times certain news stories do not cast Dodge County in a positive light. Sometimes we may even look foolish. It may also look like we have more crime and issues than our neighbors. What we must understand is that to maintain honesty with the media, we must take the good with the bad. I would never try to hide the negative things and only accent the positive.  That would not be fair and balanced.  We are often commended on our openness and transparency in which we operate.   

All of our media contacts have been positive and we have asked for their help more than they ask for ours.  I can assure you that should we ever need the force of the media, they are just an email away. The media is a full partner in our efforts, a partnership that I will maintain and treasure.” 

When it comes to childhood moments viewed on television that define a generation, my parents had the crew of Apollo 11 and their historic moon landing, enshrined in history by Neil Armstrong’s, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” And while Armstrong, amid a sleep-deprived haze, life-or-death tension and possibly the world’s most warranted case of stage fright ever, may have flubbed his line a little, the malapropism still hung so true that billions of people have been willing to overlook the fact that the words “don’t make no kinda sense.”

He did better than most of us would have. I’d have probably blurted out, “Holy shit guys, does this look as cool as it feels?”

For that matter, Armstrong could have sang “la Cucaracha” for all most people watching would have cared. The historic significance of the moment would have been just as great. In the span of a century, mankind had gone from holding wacky superstitions about the moon, from fearing it, from believing it was made of cheese, to developing the technology to keep people alive on a 225-thousand-mile journey through hard vacuum, and then doing it!

In those early days of the Apollo program, there was little purely scientific value to sending a man to the moon beyond a very strong I-told-you-so factor. Armstrong out there strutting his stuff among the moon rocks and dust was the ultimate testament to the bad-ass, can-do enthusiasm of the human race, a triumph of the grit and borderline reckless determination that props up all great discoveries and achievements. 

My parents had the crew of Apollo 11 and their historic moon landing, which tied them together as a shared experience through television. My generation had six hours of police chasing a white Ford Bronco, and all of the wretched circus that followed.

My generation got hosed.

I’m the first to admit that I’ve always had a soft spot for the space program. Though I’ve never had much patience for numbers myself, I respect the hell out of anyone with enough command over that damn things to put a plane in the air or build a bridge or cure diseases or put a man on the moon. Pure science fascinates me, as long as somebody else is doing it.

NASA had its critics, even in its heyday, who balked at the hefty price tag of three men’s trip to the lunar surface and back (Neil Armstrong you know, Buzz Aldrin you’ve probably heard of, and Mike Collins never got to land on the surface of the moon. He had the thankless job of keeping the home fires burning in the Command Module while the other two frolicked around Tranquility Base. I would trade all my worldly possessions and 10 years of my life for his “thankless job”), just as the program has its critics now.

Just as it was then, we’re a nation at war, but not really at war. These are dark times, as they were back then. We have important national priorities — health care reform, education, the economy — that require urgent attention and effort.

I maintain, and I will always maintain, that putting a human being back on the moon, and then taking that can-do attitude further should be among those priorities. It should always be among those priorities. Because while we’re toiling away to once again pull this country back from the brink of disaster, it would be nice to know that someone, somewhere out in this human condition, is doing something stupendously great just for the sake of saying we did.

We’re human beings. It’s in our nature to pursue what’s over that next horizon. When we’re not boldly going where no man has gone before, to paraphrase a great, albeit fictional man, we’re just spinning our wheels.

And that, an entire society just spinning its wheels, is as much to blame for the great spiritual malaise that has beset our world as anything else.

There was a little while this morning when I thought I’d finally get an “Oh, the HUMANITY” moment in my broadcasting career.

Then I found out the beer truck that overturned on Highway 151 north of the I-90 interchange, shattering its 22-ton cargo of glass bottles and flooding the side of the highway, was filled with lime-flavored intoxicants, and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Nothing of value was lost.

Here are the pictures taken at the scene by the Madison Fire Department. Fire spokeswoman Lori Wirth forwarded them to me. She tells me you could smell the lime-scented essence of barley and hops for miles. Since these pictures were taken, the truck trailer has apparently split open as they tried to tow it. One can imagine the deluge of beer and broken glass is quite a bit more evident.

I think the first is the best because of the big, goofy grin on the guy who’s walking away from the “carnage.”

You know what they say… No use crying over spilt beer.

Have you thanked a 911 dispatcher this week?

Because, honestly, if you haven’t, you might want to consider it. I know when I heard the following recording, I thanked the next 911 dispatcher I talked to, which happened to be Rick at the Dane County 911 Center.

The recording comes to us courtesy of our friends at the Dodge County Sheriff’s Department. The story’s actually a couple weeks old, and I meant to post on it then, but I was busy with other things (like trying to get this new website together, for starters). But the audio is so golden, and there’s so much more to be taken away from this morality tale, that I think it warrants a bit of our time, even two weeks after the fact.

The set-up is simple, really, and happens all the time in agricultural Wisconsin. A handful of cows escaped their enclosure in rural Dodge County. Where normally a farmer would have called up some relatives and neighbors to come out and help chase them back in (and yes, I’ve been a part of one of these “posses”), this woman instead dialed 911 and asked the operator to send out the cavalry.

When she was told that sheriff’s deputies had bigger fish to fry on this particular day, she tried another strategy, and was far from gracious when it failed. Note: this version of the call is UNCENSORED.

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When your career is centered on helping other people, I imagine it’s really frustrating to come across someone who so stubbornly refuses to help herself.

Sadly, these kinds of calls are not at all uncommon for the folks on the other end of the 911 line. It’s like there’s a segment of humanity that believes calling 911 is an automatic solution to any problem, big or small. Just last March, a Madison woman called the 911 center to report an idling car on the street outside her home, when she could have just as easily peaked inside it and potentially saved a man from carbon monoxide poisoning.

When I worked in Portage, Columbia County Sheriff Dennis Richards told me about a car accident on a snowy stretch of road where a carload of three high-schoolers was killed instantly. In the sport utility vehicle that became fused to the car’s driver’s side, a Baraboo man and his wife sat, injured and trapped in their vehicle. The Columbia County 911 center took several calls from other motorists reporting the accident, but only one of them stopped to help. When the state patrol got to the scene to investigate the cause of the crash, they estimated about a dozen cars had driven AROUND the accident, destroying the evidence investigators had hoped to photograph on the shoulder.

There were people who showed up to help that snowy afternoon on Highway 33 — a neighbor who was fortunately a doctor, a couple of drivers who were eventually waved down to help. But in speaking with the Sheriff about it weeks later, he told me that the number of people who actually stop and offer help has dropped off steeply in the past decade.

“A lot of people feel like they’ve done their part just by notifying law enforcement of an emergency, and nowadays they can do that with a cell phone,” Richards told me. “They don’t have to stop or pull into a house or business… They can keep right on driving.”

Having that extra set of eyes and hands at the scene of a crash, or any other emergency, can be a big help to first responders. Richards encourages those who are so inclined to offer rudimentary first aid, hold hands, reassure the victims that help is on the way and distract or shield them from any carnage.

Those with less stomach for an active role can still be of assistance by directing traffic away from the area and by staying on the line with 911 operators, giving them a play-by-play of the scene so first responders know what to expect when they arrive. A good informant at the scene of an emergency can help dispatchers figure out how many ambulances to call, if the scene is safe to approach directly and whether to page out Medflight.

“There are a lot of questions that can be answered if the phone call is made right there (from the scene),” Richards told me at the conclusion of our conversation on the topic.

Dialing 911 is not the end-all, be-all solution to every problem that crops up, though it’s often a necessary part of the fix. In some cases, people utilize 911 as a crutch, abusing the system for their own benefit and draining resources that could potentially save a life if put to better use. Other times, 911 becomes a comfortable way for people to feel like they’ve done their civic duty without really getting their hands dirty.

In either case, people need to stop being so personally helpless and start taking a more active responsibility in their own welfare and the well-being of those around them… and remember that 911 operators have feelings too.

When the Madison School Board passed its budget this spring, there were none of the furrowed brows, exasperated sighs or economy-sized bottles of anti-depressants you would normally see at a budget hearing. There were only a few members of the public who exercised their right to speak at the board, and most of them were fairly low-key, as there weren’t really any notable programs or services on the chopping block.

Afterward, I spoke briefly with board member Marj Passman, a vivacious retired schoolteacher with a New York accent that flares up when she’s excited or angry. She described the budgeting process as a “dream” made possible by a 13-million dollar multi-year referendum passed overwhelmingly by voters to stave off further cuts on top of the 35-million slashed from the budget in five years. She kept saying it was surreal, and she expected someone to tell her it wasn’t going to be that easy at any moment.

Then last month, the state legislature told Passman and hundreds of school districts statewide, “Nope, it ain’t gonna be that easy.”

Facing an unprecedented 6.6-billion dollar budget shortfall courtesy of a recession that’s ruining everone’s friggin’ decade, state lawmakers carved their spending plan up like a Thanksgiving turkey, looking for the quickest, most painless ways to make the cuts. Doing much of their work behind closed doors so the concerned parties couldn’t get a clear picture of what was in store for them, they opted to cut drastically from what’s known as “shared revenue” funds, basically a big pot of state tax money that gets passed on to counties, cities and school districts to help them foot their bills.

School districts get money from the state in two main chunks — a flat per-student dollar amount, as well as a piece of general shared revenue that’s calculated based in part on the district’s expenditures and tax revenue. When districts got wise to the impending cuts to their already carefully constructed budgets, they were told the per student fee would be cut slightly, and they could expect up to a ten percent cut to their general shared revenue — dire news to be sure. They began to plan for the worst.

And then, when the governor finally signed the budget, they got worse than the worst as the state meted out 15 percent general shared revenue cuts to around 100 districts, according to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad, marking the second time in as many months many of those districts had the fiscal carpet yanked out from under them.

Nerad presented the Madison school board with a finely-calculated assessment of their financial predicament for the first time at a committee meeting tonight, and he made it apparent why most of his colleagues call him “Doctor Nerad.” Watching him deliver the news was like watching an oncologist give a patient his biopsy results. The district will be losing out on about 3-million dollars in per-student funding, and a colon-socking 9-million in general aid.

The biggest kicker of the evening was learning what prompted the 15 percent cut in general state aid when Madison and so many schools had been told not to expect any worse than 10. It turns out, the paper-pusher who calculated those estimates had been using data that was a year old. Since Madison tried last year to minimize the referendum’s impact on taxpayers by cashing in on several million dollars of TIF money (a complicated process that allowed them to infuse the money into the budget in a one-time deal), both their revenues and expenditures were bumped into a higher Department of Public Instruction bracket for the year, resulting in the aid cut.

With bombshells like that dropping, it’s not surprising the mood in the room tonight was 180-degrees different from last spring’s budgeting session.

“I know and I appreciate that you and (Superintendent) Dan (Nerad) have to be calm and deliberative and patient,” Passman told Assistant Superintendent Erik Kass with a pained grin, “but I’m angry. I’m very angry. Our government has once again helped to destroy education in this state. Our children are going to suffer. They’ve been suffering all along anyway, and I am just plain angry about this… it’s apalling, and coming from a Democratic legislature and a Democratic governor, it’s even more apalling.”

Passman’s outrage is nothing new or alien, as she and many of her colleagues have long been pushing for the state legislature to re-imagine the one-two death punch funding mechanisms of revenue caps and the qualified economic offer. But it was a little shocking to see her turn her guns on the state’s Democrats. Then again, I’d be a little miffed too if somebody handed me the fiscal equivalent of a donkey punch after I’d settled comfortably into a well-planned budget.

As Nerad, Passman, Arlene Silveira, Lucy Mathiak, Johnny Winston Junior, Beth Moss, Ed Hughes and Maya Cole see it, the state government is trying to get away with the biggest case of passing the buck this century. Faced with the unpopular choices of raising taxes or cutting services, lawmakers chose to cut a source of funding that many schools count on, knowing full well there are provisions in state law that allow schools to raise property taxes beyond their revenue caps when a state funding source is cut.

So now it’s up to the schools to be the bad guys. Nerad says his office is working on a plan to dig out of the hole, and with the options of fiscal finagling, furloughs, program cuts and tax increases in front of him, the only thing that isn’t on the table is firing staff. Apparently, while state lawmakers were taking their own sweet time with their budget, the contractual deadline for layoffs in the Madison School District elapsed.

In other words, like most budget plans, it’s sure to piss plenty of people off. So much for Marj Passman’s dream.