Sex offenders, the welcome mat is out in the city of Milwaukee. It appears Milwaukee aldermen and the Mayor don’t care about protecting the city against sex offenders.
They have all but killed a measure to place Franklin-like restrictions on where sex offenders can live.
Mayor Tom Barrett threatened a veto, so the Common Council has decided to send the measure back to committee for further review. I covered local government long enough in my broadcasting career to know what that means: the idea’s dead.
While the aldermen celebrate tonight what they think is a procedural and policy victory, what will they do when all surrounding suburbs declare sex offenders off limits? What will they do when they themselves have opened up the floodgates?
The residents of the city of Milwaukee deserve far better representation than what they’re getting from the Mayor on down.
From jsonline.com:
Sex offender measure turned back
An attempt to declare nearly all of Milwaukee off-limits to sex offenders collapsed today.
The Common Council sent the proposed ordinance back to committee for an overhaul that may reduce it to a limit on where convicted sex offenders can loiter, instead of a broad ban on where they can live after they are released from prison.
In its original form, the measure would have prohibited sex offenders whose offenses involved children or violence from living within 2,000 feet of any school, day care center, park or playground. That would have limited the offenders to 359 housing units - just 0.14% of all Milwaukee residences - squeezed into a few tiny neighborhoods in five of the city's 15 aldermanic districts. It would not have affected the current homes of 793 offenders already out of prison, but it would have stopped most of them from moving from one Milwaukee home to another.
Mayor Tom Barrett had promised to veto the ordinance, and aldermen on both sides of the issue acknowledged the 15-member council would not have been able to muster the 10 votes needed to override a mayoral veto.
Ald. Tony Zielinski, one of the measure's sponsors, called sex offenses against children "one of the most heinous crimes that can be perpetrated" and said it made no sense to have sex offenders living near places where children gather.
But Ald. Michael Murphy said the ordinance was "based on fear." He pointed to the testimony of state Department of Corrections officials who said the restrictions would be so severe that sex offenders would drop off the mandatory state registry because they couldn't find anywhere to live legally.
Zielinski said his legislation was needed to prevent Milwaukee from becoming a dumping ground for sex offenders as surrounding communities pass similar ordinances.
Murphy and Ald. Robert Puente, who represent districts where sex offenders would be allowed, said the measure would turn their districts and three others into the sex offender dumping grounds.
Zielinski said it was possible that many of the 359 housing units wouldn't be sold or rented to sex offenders, or that day care centers eventually would open close enough to declare them off-limits as well, leaving sex offenders nowhere to live.
Ald. Jim Bohl, Zielinski's co-sponsor, agreed the measure would create what he called "small ghetto areas" of sex offenders. Bohl proposed dropping the residency restrictions and leaving only the less-controversial part of the ordinance, which would bar sex offenders from loitering near schools, day care centers, parks and playgrounds.
Zielinski opposed Bohl's change. But the rest of the council voted 13-1, with Zielinski opposed, to send the measure back to the Public Safety Committee to discuss the revision.DON’T WANT A BIG INCREASE IN YOUR SCHOOL TAXES? CONTACT FRANKLIN SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS NOW.
