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Wiley fires closing salvo at WMC and state lawmakers

Steven Elbow  —  8/23/2008 8:28 am

With less than two weeks to go before he steps down as chancellor of UW-Madison, John Wiley has penned a blistering rebuke of state officials and the state's largest business lobby for putting Wisconsin on the road to becoming a "permanent third-world state."

"Wisconsin has lost its way," opened Wiley in a 3,000-word treatise titled "From Crossroads to Crisis" that appears in the September issue of Madison Magazine. "We've lost touch with our traditions and values. Our politics has become a poisonous swill, and the most influential voice for the business community has been taken hostage by partisan ideologues."

The title stems from a 2003 article Wiley wrote for Madison Magazine entitled "Higher Education at the Crossroads," an unflattering comparison of Wisconsin to Minnesota he says "has stood up well over the last five years."

"I want to send a wake-up call to the citizens of Wisconsin regarding our economy and our educational system," Wiley wrote. "The ailing economy poses a serious threat to our schools and colleges and unless we act now to protect funding for education, the state's future will be bleak."

Wiley, who was named chancellor in 2001, hands over the reins of the university to Carolyn "Biddy" Martin on Sept. 1.

Wiley said partisanship in the state Legislature affected lawmakers' ability to get anything of substance done.

"The hyper-partisan environment at the state Capitol is toxic," he wrote. "The first priority seems to be to repudiate, damage or block any proposal or position of the other party. The second priority is to push their own party's proposals and positions in unaltered form. The far distant third priority -- to be avoided if at all possible -- seems to be addressing any genuine state need that requires compromise."

But Wiley saved his most caustic criticism for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state's largest business lobby which has become a key backer of conservative Republican political candidates who tend to vote in the organization's interest.

"For the last 15 years of Wisconsin's declining fortunes, the candidates WMC has supported for elective office have been the very ones who, when elected, have concentrated their efforts on opposing stem cell research and domestic partner benefits, pushing a cleverly named but economically devastating 'taxpayer bill of rights,' fussing over the definition of 'marriage,' hauling universities before staged hearings to defend our efforts to prepare ethnic minority students for the workforce, railing against the personal views of otherwise obscure instructors, resisting any form of gun control, proposing mandatory arming of teachers, demanding the illegal summary firing of named state employees and proposing the elimination of the state's only public law school."

WMC says its efforts are aimed at "making Wisconsin the most competitive state in the nation," but Wiley says the group's efforts have taken the state down the path of economic uncertainty.

"What do any of these ideological diversions have to do with 'making Wisconsin the most competitive state in the nation?'" he writes. "It's Wisconsin's equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns."

WMC repudiated Wiley's accusations in a press release issued shortly after Madison Magazine's article appeared online.

"Wiley's commentary contains factual misstatements that need immediate correction," wrote James Buchen, WMC's vice president for government relations.

Buchen maintained that WMC has protected funding for the UW System, and, contrary to Wiley's criticisms, has gone to bat for working citizens by backing increases in the minimum wage and working with organized labor.

Buchen also repudiated Wiley's characterization of WMC's ads in last spring's Supreme Court race -- during which little-known Burnett County Judge Michael Gableman unseated Justice Louis Butler -- as "scurrilous personal attacks."

A spokesman for state Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, chairman of the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee and a frequent critic of the UW System, said Nass was "disappointed" by Wiley's "distorted and bitter" words.

"Wiley lives, I think frankly, in a distorted world," said Mike Mikalsen, spokesman for Nass.

Mikalsen ridiculed Wiley by listing a string of highly publicized scandals that happened under Wiley's watch, such as his allowing former Vice Chancellor Paul Barrows to go on sick leave amid accusations of sexual harassment and security issues

"Those are all things that Rep. Nass has been critical of, has challenged the UW on and raised questions about, and numerous other scandals, frankly there's probably two pages worth of issues," Mikalsen said. "But John Wiley wants to live in this very distorted world that everything he did was wonderful and he ran the university well."

Mikalsen also said that the UW-Madison already receives too much funding in relation to other campuses in the UW system, and its activities are too heavily tilted toward research at the expense of undergraduate education.

"If there's any campus in the state that has no room to complain that they don't have resources it's Madison," Mikalsen said, adding that his boss and other legislators "have no time for the whining that John Wiley became known for toward the end."

Wiley ends his article by calling for a series of reforms, starting with making Wisconsin's Legislature a part-time operation, which he says will reduce partisanship. He also called for increasing efficiency by consolidating the state's "truly astounding number of independent counties, cities, towns, villages, school districts and other jurisdictions;" reform of the state's "scandalous" and "wasteful" building and structure maintenance programs and personnel systems; and reform of the state's justice system, which has nearly 23,000 incarcerated people compared with about 8,700 in Minnesota, which has a similar population.

He ends with two more recommendations:

"To the citizens of Wisconsin: Unless we want Wisconsin to become a permanent third-world state, we need to stop electing fanatically dedicated partisan ideologues of all stripes and start electing pragmatic problem solvers. To WMC member companies: Please get control of your staff or replace them."

Steven Elbow  —  8/23/2008 8:28 am