Sean Ryan , sean.ryan@dailyreporter.com

Posted October 15, 2008

The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission ignores Milwaukee residents and should be cut off from federal money, say those opposed to the agency’s recertification.

But SEWRPC spent the last three years establishing a stronger connection to city residents, said Executive Director Phil Evenson. It created a task force to respond to complaints that minorities and low-income residents aren’t properly represented by the com-mission. It also partnered with groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin Inc. and the Milwaukee Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to hold hearings about the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee Commuter Rail project.

“That effort has involved, to the best we can, reaching out to all of the neighborhoods in Mil-waukee,” Evenson said.

The Federal Highway Admin-istration will visit Wisconsin next week to consider SEWRPC’s recertification as a planning organization that rules on projects receiving federal money.

The ACLU of Wisconsin, along with four other Milwaukee evironmental and social groups, is calling Milwaukee residents to testify against the commission on Oct. 22. The groups want more minorities working as SEWRPC planners and more Milwaukee representatives on the agency’s board of directors, said Melissa Scanlan, founder and senior counsel of Midwest Environ-mental Advocates.

The commission’s plans for regional public transit, rail, housing development and other issues dictate whether Milwaukee residents get jobs in surrounding communities, she said.

“SEWRPC has a great impact on development within the city of Milwaukee, which has a very high population of low-income res-idents and people of color,” Scanlan said.

SEWRPC was created in the early 1960s to help the federal government plan highway de-velopment in southeastern Wis-consin, and it has been the federally recognized planning organization for the region since the 1970s. Highway, rail or other projects cannot receive federal money unless they are in SEWRPC’s regional plans.

If the highway administration removes SEWRPC’s federal des-ignation this year, some other agency not affiliated with a local government must take over, Evenson said.

Doug Hecox, FHA spokesman, said the agency is unaware of instances when it denied re-certification to planning organ-izations. But there were times, he said, when the FHA required corrective actions or placed other conditions on the recertification. For example, Portland’s Metro Council needed to draft a plan to mitigate traffic congestion before it could be recertified.

Scanlan said it’s not likely that the federal government will revoke SEWRPC’s status, but it could at least give the commission more specific direction in responding to equality problems. That could include requiring that Milwaukee have a seat on SEWRPC’s board of directors.

“The more realistic route is that there would be more specific requirements,” Scanlan said.

When federal officials recertified SEWRPC (PDF) in 2005, they asked the organization to build stronger ties with Milwaukee groups. The commission this year created an Environmental Justice Task Force to respond to com-plaints coming from Milwaukee.

“I see that Phil Evenson and (Deputy Director) Ken Yunker, everybody is really looking to resolve the matter,” said N. Lynnette McNeely, task force member and attorney for the NAACP Waukesha County Branch. “They’re really, really try-ing.”

McNeely said the task force is still sharing its equality concerns with SEWRPC staff and com-missioners, but she said she isn’t sure if the message is getting through yet. Groups such as the NAACP Milwaukee Branch, which filed an affirmative-action complaint against SEWRPC last month, might have a stronger stance on the issues, and they’re advancing the discussion, she said.

“There’s great hope,” McNeely said. “And we need to keep working and keep trying to move things in the right direction.”