April 28, 2022 at 3:47 p.m.
Holewinski must prove his leadership
Holewinski must prove his leadership
As with others, we offer our congratulations.
Excuse us, though, if we don't immediately jump on the bandwagon cheering Holewinski. To be sure, he rode a solid wave of moderate and conservative support to win, and he is poised to make a difference after the disastrous tenure of Dave Hintz, who never met a bureaucrat he didn't like, or obey.
For example, if public health director Linda Conlon had wanted the county to buy the Taj Mahal for one of those fake public health emergencies they like to cook up over there - Gun violence is a public health emergency! Racism is a public health emergency! Donald Trump is a public health emergency! - Hintz would have tried to do it.
Holewinksi is different. He would have least asked how much it would cost and then put it on a referendum ballot as a tax hike he supported.
Maybe we are too harsh. In an era when spinelessness has prevailed on the county board - Hintz still has the sheriff's department looking for his - Scott Holewinski has called out the board's recklessness. He has advocated for cutting noncore spending and he has opposed raiding the general fund balance for ongoing expenditures, which was perhaps the biggest signature of the Hintz era, except of course for his colossal failures in open government and his unquestioning support of just about any and all government spending.
About the only positive thing about Hintz was that Bob Mott didn't like him.
Beyond those fiscally responsible positions, we will forever be indebted to Holewinski's successful and single-handed effort to torpedo the construction of a new highway department that the county didn't need. Had it not been for him, the county would have moved forward.
And, yes, Holewinski is certainly more conservative than our county whiner in residence, Tom Jerow. He hasn't made a career out of making peoples' lives miserable, as Jerow did by definition as a former employee of the DNR, and he isn't inclined to choke up when talking about the master gardener program at county meetings.
A crying county board chairman would just be too much for all of us.
So, yes, Holewinski is more conservative than Jerow, but that's like saying Ronald Reagan was more conservative than Karl Marx. It's a low bar.
And there are red flags. Big red flags. It's hard to conceive that a conservative would support a million dollar tax hike referendum, as Holewinski did, for example. And the Oneida County approach to zoning is but a shell of what the approach was under the late Gary Baier.
Put simply, Baier always fiercely protected property rights, always moved to block regulations and to question their necessity. In contrast, Holewinski does not question regulations, only how many there should be and how restrictive the county can make them. He lets the zoning department's Commissar of Collectivity, Karl Jennrich, run wild with regulatory schemes.
Indeed, when it came to light recently that the zoning committee was backlogged on its complaints and on pursuing violations, Holewinski was open to adding more staff to police the already onerous regulations the people of the county must endure.
At one meeting, Holewinski informed Jennrich that if he needed more staff to go after people, then he should have it: "If we need more help to enforce the rules, then we should be applying for that," he said.
Well, no, they shouldn't be applying for that. It apparently has never occurred to Holewinski that rather than add more staff, the county should reduce the number of rules it has to enforce.
As for cutting programs and not using the general fund recklessly, Holewinski talks a good game, but that's all it is so far: Talk. Now that he's the county board chairman, he needs to make it happen.
To wit, Holewinski ran up 16 votes. If he's a true leader and conservative, he'll be able to corral at least a majority of 11 votes to end the liberal practice of raiding the general fund, and he will muster the votes to eliminate the UW-Extension program once and for all. That effort failed just narrowly before; Holewinski should make it happen.
He also has a job to do to educate new county board members on the anti-property rights positions and duplicative efforts of the North Central Regional Planning Commission, and how they have over the years promoted regional government, at one point even advocating abolishing towns. So instead of going to your town board meeting to address an issue, they would have made you drive to Wausau to do it.
As a true leader and conservative, Holewinski would also expose the Wisconsin Counties Association for what it is - a liberal protector of institutional government that uses taxpayer dollars to lobby against taxpayer interests, such as tax hikes.
We'll be glad to help in those educational endeavors.
Then, too, Holewinski should have minimal opposition to accomplish real objectives. The most annoying liberals are gone - Alan VanRaalte, with his coma-inducing, NPR-delivered speeches that compiled liberal cliche after liberal cliche, and Bob Mott, who spouted leftist propaganda by asking loaded questions, you know, questions in the vein of "Have you stopped beating your spouse?"
Neither supervisor accomplished anything at all, except for Mott making Hintz so mad about the transit commission that Hintz actually sat down and wrote a letter. That showed them!
Of the liberals remaining on the board, the board elections showed just how much of an island Steven Schreier and Bob Thome are stranded on. They were both three-time losers in the elections for county board leadership - they lost in the race for chairman, lost in the race for first vice chairman, lost in the race for second vice chairman.
In the race for chairman, Schreier got exactly one vote. How humiliating. Either he voted for himself, which means not a single other soul on the board thought he was remotely worthy of the job, or didn't vote for himself, which means even he didn't think he was worthy of the job.
Either way, such an embarrassing performance should carry consequences. Here's a thought: When Schreier makes comments to the board during upcoming debates, he should always remind everybody at the conclusion of his remarks that he's the guy who only got one vote, so they can take his opinions with the grains of salt they deserve.
So the opposition isn't much. In short, Holewinski is in a great position to make significant changes in a county government that has been run by an elitist special-interest bureaucracy for far too long.
Maybe he will. We hope he will. But if he doesn't, we'll be there to call it out, for sure, in a polite way, of course.
Comments:
You must login to comment.