Barrett aide says recall leader has other goal

Maybe this will breathe some life into the all-butdormant drive to recall Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

Patrick Curley, chief of staff to Barrett, blasted Allen Jansen, the leader of the recall effort, for being part of a group of former city firefighters who filed notices saying they might be suing the city in an effort to boost their disability pay.

The group filed their notices on June 28, less than two weeks before the recall was announced. Copies of the notices were made available under the open records law.

Jansen and the other former firefighters on duty disability are upset that the city didn’t give them a 5.8% pay raise awarded to active city firefighters to compensate them for state-mandated pension contributions.

“Appears to me that the recall Mr. Jansen and (Milwaukee Professional Fire Fighters) Local 215 are supporting has everything to do with getting more cash from city taxpayers with very little regard for the taxpayers,” Curley said via email. Asked to respond, Jansen went ballistic. “He’s a liar,” said Jansen, a former captain with the Milwaukee Fire Department. “That’s not what it’s all about.”

Jansen went on to call Curley a “henchman” and “barnacle on City Hall,” noting that the chief of staff has worked for the city for more than two decades. Curley declined to comment in response to his remarks.

The recall, Jansen said, is about Barrett’s policies, not the firefighters’ squabbles with the city. The duty disability dispute, he noted, is between his union and the city attorney.

Local 215 has not endorsed the recall, but the powerful union is making copies of the recall petition available at its shop on W. Wisconsin Ave. A lawyer for the union, who filed the notices, did not return calls this week.

A third-generation Milwaukeean, Jansen suggested he is the one standing up for the city’s taxpayers.

He said Barrett’s streetcar plan is a waste of money. The former firefighter is upset that the mayor has said the city might be forced to cut 84 police officer positions. He said the city is also pouring millions into downtown development while the median income in the city has stagnated.

“Pat Curley is just trying to muddy the waters,” Jansen said.

But it doesn’t look like a lot of city voters are feeling his outrage about the mayor.

Jansen’s group, which calls itself “Save Our City. Milwaukeeans Can’t Wait,” has only about two weeks to turn in more than 51,000 petition signatures to force a recall election against Barrett, who was re-elected last year with 70% of the vote.

Any resident of the city of Milwaukee who is eligible to vote can sign the petition.

Asked about the petition drive, Jansen acknowledged that it is moving along slowly and that he may not have been the best person to coordinate the effort. He declined to give odds on whether his group would hit its target.

“We’re going to the end,” Jansen said. “If we don’t get what we think we wanted to get and expected to get, I will shake the mayor’s hand and say, ‘I was wrong. I felt there was more pent-up desire to have a different city.’ “

“If I’m wrong, I’ll say I was wrong,” he continued. “It doesn’t mean I agree with his policies, but I’ll have to find a different way to fight.”