With less than a week to go before the April 5 election, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele and his challenger, state Sen. Chris Larson, are taking very different stands on Jonette Arms, the highly respected interim director of the county's Department on Aging who filed a racial discrimination suit against Abele in February.
Abele won't promote Arms, who is African American, and his administration has undermined Arms at every turn.
And as I'm reporting exclusively, a top Abele aide made a very strange appearance before the Commission on Aging on Feb. 26, just days after I revealed that Arms had filed her complaint of race discrimination.
The aide, Jon Janowski, wasn't listed on the meeting's agenda and his strange testimony seemed to baffle commissioners as well as Arms, who was in the meeting. Janowski said he'd done research on the department and handed out his business cards, inviting commissioners to meet him one on one to discuss this "fascinating" research. The clear implication of Janowski's message was that he had some sort of inside scoop that was too hot to talk about in public.
Stephanie Sue Stein, Arms' mentor at the Department on Aging, told me Janowski's appearance was "completely unethical."
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You be the judge of that.
Abele's team has said that Arms can apply for the director's position when it conducts a national search after the election.
But Larson announced at a press conference yesterday that his first appointment would be Jonette Arms as the full director on aging.
I wasn't able to attend, but Larson released a statement, saying, "Jonette Arms is highly qualified to be the permanent Director of the Department on Aging, and when I am elected Milwaukee County Executive, I will appoint her as Director.
"Ms. Arms has bipartisan support backing her permanent appointment. Supervisor Taylor, a Republican, has publicly called for Abele to permanently hire her. Taylor has also stated his concerns that Abele’s intentional uncertainty within the Department will adversely affect services for our senior neighbors.”
"I’m troubled by Abele’s has a pattern of discriminatory employment practices that stretch back to 2011, when his administration participated in a phony 'sting' operation against Johnny Thomas, a candidate for Milwaukee Comptroller who was later acquitted."
Abele Aide Won't Talk about Info in Public
Will Chris Abele stop at nothing to be rid of Jonette Arms?
In the latest of what seems to be a series of efforts to undermine Arms, a top aide to Abele, Jon Janowski, spoke out at a Feb. 26 Commission on Aging meeting and made allegations about the department.
Well, to clarify, Janowski didn’t make any allegations.
Rather, Janowski, a former Department on Aging employee now working directly for Abele as his director of legislative affairs, passed out his business cards and told commissioners that he would speak to them in private, individually, about “fascinating” research he’d done on the department.
He said he was at the meeting on his own—even though he works for Abele and is listed as representing Abele at the meeting.
“My proposition is that, whether it’s before the election or after the election, that’s irrelevant to me,” Janowski said, according to audio of the meeting I obtained via an open records request. “I ask that you meet with me and have a one-on-one meeting and I’ll share my perspective on things that we’ve been hearing and reading. And why would that even be important? I’m just a lowly staffer at Milwaukee County. I don’t have any management responsibilities.”
He said his experience at Hunger Task Force, in the Department on Aging and now with Abele gives him a “unique perspective” on whatever it is he won’t say.
He said there’s no truth to the rumors that Abele is trying to merge the Department on Aging with Health and Human Services but that he was asked to do research on best practices from around the country.
“When I meet with you I will be happy to share the summary of my research with you to give you more facts about what I found,” Janowski said. “It’s fascinating, fascinating.”
He then said that Abele plans to do a national search for the next director on aging. And once again he invited commissioners to call him for interviews.
The clear implication is that Janowski, a “lowly staffer” who just happens to hold a top position in the county executive’s office, came up with dirt on the way the Department on Aging is run that’s so sensational that he can’t speak about it in public.
Hunh?
The commissioners were about as baffled as I was when I listened to the audio.
I reached out to Janowski for comment, but he said I needed to speak to Abele’s spokeswoman, Melissa Baldauff.
Baldauff emailed, "The County Executive asked Jon to explore best practices that various Aging Departments around the country implement and see how we compare. Because the Department on Aging does not have a person dedicated to research and analysis, and because Jon had previously worked in the Department on Aging, he was a good fit to conduct such an analysis. This is a common practice for all departments under the County Executive - we are always searching for best practices and how we can provide a better service to the community. Jon wanted to share his findings with the Commissioners so he offered to meet with people individually so as to not take up the limited time that was allotted at that meeting."
Abele Has No African Americans in His Cabinet
Let’s pull back a bit.
Arms is the interim director of the Department on Aging. She has been in this position since June 6, 2015, when her predecessor and mentor, Stephanie Sue Stein, retired. Stein hired Arms, trained her and groomed her to take on the role of director. The Commission on Aging overwhelmingly agreed with Arms’ appointment.
But Abele didn’t make her a full director.
Instead, he seems to have undermined her at every turn.
How do I know this?
Arms filed a complaint of racial discrimination against Abele on Feb. 3, which I reported on exclusively in the Feb. 23 Shepherd, days before Janowski made his strange appearance before the Commission on Aging.
Let me remind you that Arms is African American and Abele has no other African American department heads.
Isn’t that shocking?
Arms alleges in her complaint that Abele has treated her differently than his other cabinet members. Abele has transferred staff out of the Aging Department, undercut Arms’ authority and doesn’t allow her to speak on behalf of the department.
It’s so bad that Abele’s chief of staff, Raisa Koltun, chastised Arms for not lying to county supervisors about why she hasn’t been promoted, Arms alleges in her complaint. Apparently, Arms was supposed to go along with her mistreatment so that it wouldn’t embarrass the county executive, who is facing a tough re-election battle against Chris Larson.
So just days after my article appeared, Janowski attended the Commission on Aging meeting and spoke about his “fascinating” research about the department in front of the commissioners. Even worse, he wasn’t listed on the agenda and it seems that he caught the commissioners off guard.
Jonette Arms’ Defense
To make matters worse, Janowski made his non-allegations right in front of Arms, who defended herself after he spoke.
According to the audio of the meeting, Arms said the situation during the meeting was uncomfortable and acknowledged that she was taking a risk by speaking to commissioners.
“A lot of things have been discussed, a lot of things have been said,” Arms said. “I am the interim director. My role is to keep the department going. My role is to bring in any opportunities to ensure our seniors are being taken care of. Seniors are first, OK? And I put that in my message to you and I’ve been saying that to staff. Seniors are first.”
She said what had transpired during the meeting felt "a little disrespectful.”
She said she wasn’t given the information Janowski alluded to earlier and stressed her qualifications for the job. Later, she said that she tried to be inclusive and brought in the best experts to do the job.
For this she got a massive standing ovation.
“I’m not doing this for applause,” Arms said. “I’m doing this because I’ve sat quietly since June.”
She alluded to Janowski’s appearance during the meeting, which she apparently didn’t know about.
“There’s something going on and for me it’s not political, it’s about taking care of seniors,” Arms said.
Arms then asked for a chance to demonstrate her leadership abilities and to be considered for the director’s position.
Stephanie Sue Stein Blasts Janowski
Firmly in Arms’ corner is Stephanie Sue Stein, the well-respected longtime director on aging who hired Arms and groomed her to take over the department last June, when Stein retired. She said Arms’ experience at a national nonprofit, then her stellar work at the Department on Aging, made her a great choice for the director’s position.
She said a national search for a new director was unnecessary.
“They were handed someone who others would take gleefully, with joy,” Stein said.
She said it became clear to her that Abele was never going to appoint Arms to be the director and that the administration was undermining her ability to do her job.
She said Arms’ racial discrimination complaint has “100% merit” and said at least two other African American women have been passed over for high-level promotions.
“This is not something new,” Stein said.
Stein attended the first portion of the Feb. 26 meeting, during which she gave her full support for Arms and for an independent Department on Aging.
She wasn’t in the meeting to hear Janowski’s comments first hand, but she listened to the audio afterwards and was upset, she told me. She said in her 22 years of experience, the county executive has never sent a staff person, but in this case Abele sent two—Janowski and Claire Zautke, who discussed the Domes situation with commissioners.
“I believe that his behavior was not only unprofessional but completely unethical,” Stein said of Janowski’s appearance at the meeting. “That was a complete violation. His boss was running for public office and he was there basically to support what his boss was doing by offering to give this secret information.”
She said she knew of three commissioners who have met with Janowski and she knows what information he dug up, which she dismisses as “totally ridiculous” and “bogus.” She said it was merely a survey of what other agencies do around the country, and not some damning information about the county’s department.
“None of this information was ever shared with [Jonette] and they’re saying it right in front of her,” Stein said. “That’s a really good work environment, isn’t it? When people who work for your boss admit that they’ve been doing secret research behind your back that they want to tell the commissioners in private when they have never mentioned one word of this to you.”
Stein said Jonette has conducted herself in an exemplary manner throughout this ordeal and that Abele’s treatment of her says a lot about his attitude toward the county’s seniors.
“Because Jonette has had no access to the chief executive of Milwaukee County since June 6, seniors have had no access to the chief executive of Milwaukee County since June 6,” Stein said. “There are 153,000 people 60 and over in this county who deserve representation in county government. And they have not had it. Clearly it is not important to this administration. So not only has she been marginalized, but the seniors of Milwaukee County and the Department on Aging have been marginalized since June 6.”
