This Just In ...
Kevin Fischer is a veteran broadcaster, the recipient of over 150 major journalism awards from the Milwaukee Press Club, the Wisconsin Associated Press, the Northwest Broadcast News Association, the Wisconsin Bar Association, and others. He has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for over three decades. A longtime aide to state Senate Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature, Kevin can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, "InterCHANGE," on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10, and heard filling in on Newstalk 1130 WISN. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, and their lovely baby daughter, Kyla Audrey, in Franklin.
Thank you for your service to Franklin, Bryan Maersch
The world of politics is cruel. It is unfair.
Franklin resident and blogger Bryan Maersch had been serving as an appointed member of the city’s Technology Commission.
Maersch is highly qualified to serve. For the past 22 years, he has been an Information Technology professional at Northwestern Mutual. The past 11 years he has been a Systems and Project Specialist in the NM Compliance Department’s Systems division, administering the system that monitors NML’s Financial Representatives’ email for non-compliant language which is legally required by both the Security Exchange Commission and the watchdog organization, FINRA. This experience has proved to be invaluable to the city of Franklin as the Technology Commission has discussed email archiving for the city. Maersch has a complete understanding of the Technology Commission’s oversight of the city’s website.
Franklin mayor Tom Taylor has opted not to extend Maersch’s spot on the Commission that officially expired in April. Call it what you want. The mayor rejected, dumped, canned, fired Maersch. That, of course, is his prerogative as mayor.
Keep in mind that Maersch and other commission members volunteer their time and impressive expertise resulting in major savings to the city if they had to secure such professional knowledge in the market.
I fully understand how apathetic Franklin is. While the average citizen hates the taxing and spending here, that citizen typically does nothing about it, misleading the powers that be to misinterpret their sentiments and continue on with their taxing and spending ways. An appointment to a volunteer commission is much too inside baseball for 99.9% of Franklin to care even the slightest.
But Franklin should care. Part of the duties of the city’s CEO, the mayor is to select appropriate residents to serve on various boards and commissions. The faith and trust the voters put in the mayor is that he/she will choose the best qualified for the positions.
One could argue that Maersch had his dumping coming because he has been highly critical of the mayor on his personal blog. If that’s the case, how does the mayor explain his playing footsy with Franklin resident Greg Kowalski who is one of the head honchos of a group wanting to work with the city to develop facilities with no concrete details or costs or funding sources (other than the taxpayers). Kowalski was consistently critical of Mayor Taylor on his various blogs in the past.
Kowalski’s uber-liberal view of business is the kind of mindset that has destroyed Wisconsin’s business climate. Governor Walker is desperately trying to improve that climate, and Mayor Taylor is a Walker supporter. So what’s the deal of playing nice with Kowalski, but dumping Maersch?
I’ll let you connect the dots.
Mayor Taylor may have been smiling when he gave the axe to Maersch, but it’s a loss for the city.
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