County-Employed Jackasses

Question:

How many hundreds of thousands of enhanced-pension dollars did Dick Buschmann take when he retired from "service" at Milwaukee County?

Think he deserves them?

"It doesn't do us any good to spin our wheels and revoke people if they are still being paid in the system," she wrote in an e-mail to her then-supervisor Dick Buschmann.

She also questioned the process of referring fraud cases to the district attorney's office after finding a husband and wife stole thousands of dollars from the Wisconsin Shares program.

"We have identified $39,000 that was obtained under false pretenses that we are recouping," she wrote in a 2001 e-mail to Buschmann and another supervisor, Jackie Rice. "This case is very well documented and should be referred to the DA for review."

Buschmann repliedthat Romero was overstepping her bounds.

"The decision to recoup any overpayment is a civil not a criminal determination. It is not an automatic basis for criminal prosecution.  . . .  It is not a certifier's role to make direct referrals to the DA," Buschmann wrote.

Now and then the term "blanket party" comes to mind.