At today’s meeting of the Milwaukee County Board a motion to approve a resolution to take $150,000 of the county’s contingency (emergency) fund to pay for a study to determine if the county should return to an in-house system of providing meals to inmates at correctional facilities rather than continue to contract with a private company received 10 votes in favor and 7 opposed. The resolution required a two-thirds vote or 12 votes to pass, so it failed.

Supervisor Steve Taylor tried to knock some fiscal responsibility into bleeding heart board members like admitted Socialist Ryan Clancy. Taylor argued the county was starting the day with a $700,000 projected deficit. Reverting to an in-house program with county staff would only increase the deficit that wasn’t logical. The food quality at the facilities, Taylor said, was “not a crisis,” and that the superintendent of the House of Correction located in Franklin informed him the meals contained all the proper nutrients and calories.

Taylor also said the board was unwise to find comfort in a stash of COVID relief money the county has received, warning it would go away. He urged his colleagues not to “make decisions we’ll regret when the free money runs out.”

Citing the $ 1.8 million dollars savings with the system now in place, Supervisor Shawn Rolland offered the option of having the county’s procurement team working with Aramark, the current private firm providing food services, to get them to improve their product. Taylor agreed with Rolland but the suggestion lacked enough support.

In the end the board did not have enough votes to conduct a costly study many members hoped would lead to dumping Aramark. A defeat for the criminal sympathizers.

Maybe the 10 supervisors that are all upset, wringing their hands for those poor inmates that Supervisor Clancy said today are “all innocent” (that’s right, none of them have done anything wrong) can get together outside Franklin’s House of Correction. Maybe hold hands. Sing some political songs. Light candles. Shed a few tears.

Oh the pain and suffering. The injustice of it all.