Update on Political Blunder #7

An update on one of the Top Ten Political Blunders of 2005

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel DayWatch Blog:

Records delay in Holloway ethics case continues
Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway won another delay today in his effort to resist turning over financial records to an Ethics Board special procescutor.

Hearing Examiner Michael Hogan sided with the Ethics Board, but said his order would not take effect until Monday, giving Holloway time to appeal the latest ruling to Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Richard Sankovitz.

Holloway's attorney, Jeremy Levinson, pledged to immediately seek relief from Sankovitz, the same judge who last month - while Hogan was on vacation - temporarily blocked enforcement of an Ethics Board subpoena for some of Holloway's bank records.

Hogan said at a hearing today that he stood by his earlier rejection of Holloway's claims that the investigation is overly broad. But Hogan, an appointee of the county, said Sankovitz should decide that question before the ethics case proceeds.

Ethics Board special prosecutor John Fiorenza said he needs mortgage and credit records to evaluate Holloway's claims regarding ownership of a property on W. Atkinson Ave. in Milwaukee. That property is at the center of a 90-county ethics
complaint filed in June against Holloway. (My take: YOU READ THAT RIGHT, 90 COUNTS)

The civil complaint alleges that Holloway failed to publicly disclose ownership of the property as required, and received $165,000 for the property from a social service agency in a lease-and-purchase transaction that was never completed.

Holloway has said he stopped disclosing ownership of the property because he was merely holding it for the agency, the Opportunities Industrialization Center of Greater Milwaukee.

The complaint also alleged failure to disclose other properties on county economic-interest forms.

Responding to Levinson's concerns about Holloway's privacy, Fiorenza asked for a confidentiality order that would keep private any documents that don't become part of the evidence in Holloway's ethics trial, currently set for April 3 in front of Hogan.

Levinson said that was not good enough.

Holloway, he said, 'wants no one' to view the bank records regarding the Atkinson Ave. property. (My take: I BET!!!) He has argued that many of the allegations fall outside the statute of limitations.

This could be one of the more interesting stories of 2006. Meanwhile, each month this gets delayed, Holloway continues to receive his chairman's pay, which is greater than that of an ordinary Milwaukee County Board member. The impotent County Board could at the very least cut his pay, but they don't...