Casting Pearls Before Swine

On Monday the Public Policy Forum (PPF) posted an item on its blog that it categorized as "PPF Pearls". The item used the millions of dollars that are now needed to correct problems at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex as an opportunity to make a larger point. The point being that PPF made several budgetary suggestions last year for Milwaukee County and very little (if any) of them were ever used.

One of their suggestions which they featured in Monday's blog posting was the following:

"The Forum's 2009 budget review recommended establishment of an independent entity - along the lines either of the independently elected city comptroller or the state's Legislative Fiscal Bureau..."

The PPF idea is certainly worthy of note but it is not the first time that such a suggestion has been made. Very early in Scott Walker's tenure as County Executive, a special commission made a very similar recommendation. In Bruce Murphy's 2005 piece, "The Great Imposter", he reminded us that Walker had all but ignored that very same reform-minded suggestion.

I will personally look forward to more "PPF Pearls" but I hope that they don't expect Walker to enact any of them. To borrow a convenient biblical idiom, if the past is any indication, proposing real reform to Walker is like casting those "pearls before swine".