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John Foust - Olsen
's Propaganda

 

Olsen's Propaganda

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In the spring of 2004, David E. Olsen is one of four declared candidates for an At-Large seat on the Jefferson Common Council.

You've got to give him credit for boldness...  Being fired - well, "asked to resign" - in 2001 by the City Council and the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce from his position of Executive Director at the Commerce and Industry Association wasn't enough of a wake-up call. 

Getting caught hiding a $30,000 slush fund at the Chamber wasn't enough, either.  (Even the Chamber Board didn't know about it.)  Getting caught lying about Chamber assets to the City in order to secure more funding for the Chamber wasn't enough, either.  Getting caught cooking the books to create an unauthorized retirement fund for himself wasn't enough, either.  Being reprimanded for intimidating City employees wasn't enough, either.

Olsen dodged this controversy from the start. You'd think an ex-Director of a small-town Chamber of Commerce could easily gather signatures from local business owners he'd helped. Instead, Olsen went to north edge of town at the Deer Creek Apartments to secure more than 40 of the 65 nomination signatures needed to be on the ballot.  Perhaps he believed it would be easier getting signatures from people he didn't know, and who didn't know him.

After laying low since his dismissal in the summer of 2001, Olsen is now actively seeking the limelight - and he'll bring his own light, if necessary.

Use Dem Bones!

The kick-off for his campaign was his February 1 appointment to the Funeral Director's Examining Board. Olsen wasn't so much selected as that he applied for an available opening.

The next publicity stunt was a newspaper story in the March 8 Daily Union regarding some skeletal remains found in the dirt of the foundation of a home in Jefferson. The owner couldn't proceed with renovations, caught between State regulations that demanded careful treatment of the bones and the lack of State funds to perform the necessary archaeological excavation.

Olsen, a funeral director by trade, offered to a hand on two fronts. As the Daily Union story said, "Last week, Dave Olsen of Olsen Funeral Home in Jefferson volunteered his assistance. Olsen, who had worked for a U.S. Senator more than 10 years before and has contacts in state government, made a call to a person with whom he had previously worked who now served on the historical society board, asking that something be done to move this situation forward."

The story continued with four more paragraphs describing his donation of a casket and vault, and then of Olsen expounding his problem-solving abilities at his staff assistant job for Sen. Herb Kohl, more than ten years ago.

Next the story continues with "Olsen said he was too glad to be able to assist to some degree in resolving Weisensel's dilemma, saying 'When you have the opportunity to help people, you should always do so.' The funeral home director said he was excited that all of the attention drawn to the Jefferson bones situation had made a difference, and that he was able to play a part.'"

In my endless pursuit of his fabrications and self-amplifications of his role in local events, I did some simple fact-checking. I asked the Historical Society what role Olsen actually played in this news story.

Here's the reply from the Director of the Historical Society:

Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 12:00:39 -0600
From: "Robert Thomasgard" <rbthomasgard@whs.wisc.edu>

I have seen the article you are referring to.  I have never been contacted by any member of our 36-person Board of Curators about this issue nor David Olsen.  The Society has been considering how to address this situation for some time, and coincidentally my approval of the request for disturbance occurred just before, but not as the result of, the media coverage of the situation.

I have attached a copy of the letter I sent to Helen Weisensel dated March 5, 2004.  As you can read, I thanked David Olsen for his offer to provide (at his expense) a casket, an appropriate service and a grave marker for the human remains uncovered.  We very much appreciated his leadership to assist with the situation.

Bob Thomasgard Jr.
Director
Wisconsin Historical Society
816 State Street
Madison, WI 53706-1482
608/264-6442; FAX 608/264-6542

If Olsen called someone on the Board, they didn't bother to forward the info to the Director.

The Daily Union followed up on the love-fest with a masthead editorial on March 10 that said "Among those who helped was Olsen Funeral Home owner Dave Olsen, who made a few phone calls to his contacts in Madison (he formerly worked for a senator and is close to the Doyle administration)."

Olsen worked as a staff assistant in Sen. Herb Kohl's Milwaukee office more than ten years ago, handling constituent requests for senatorial favors. As for his connection to the Governor's office - did the papers just repeat what they heard from Olsen, without checking facts?

No doubt he deserves kudos for donating a casket and vault, but now you know the other half of the story. Actually, the rest of the story will take place when the bones are re-buried. Only half the bones are in Jefferson. The state still has the bones that were already exposed. I predict the bones will be re-interred with a solemn ceremony presided over by Olsen, just in time for the April election.


Why Olsen is not right for Jefferson

Below is a letter to the editor that I sent to Watertown Daily Times and the Daily Jefferson County Union. It's a great one-page summary of Olsen's shenanigans for the City of Jefferson. For background on all these details, see the other Jefferson economic development pages.

The Daily Union printed it with the words in blue edited out. The Daily Times declined to print it.

- John

David Olsen may have the right to run for office, but I believe he is not the right candidate for Jefferson's City Council.

I have a great deal of experience with Olsen. From 1997 to 2001, Olsen was employed as Executive Director of the City of Jefferson's Commerce and Industry Association (CIA), an economic development umbrella organization overseeing the Chamber of Commerce and the Jefferson Development Corporation (JDC).

In the spring of 1999, I began to investigate the CIA and JDC. If these organizations were steering Jefferson's economic development efforts, I wanted to know why their meetings and records were not open to the public. Olsen happily conducted closed-door meetings of the CIA and JDC for several years, blatantly disobeying the 1998 opinions from the City Attorney that said they should be open.

Olsen fought my efforts to open these meetings at every turn. He destroyed records and resisted my requests. My complaints led to our District Attorney opening the CIA and JDC to public inspection, forcing them into compliance with Wisconsin's Open Records and Open Meetings law in September 1999.

In March 2001 the CIA Board, including the Mayor, voted unanimously to reprimand Olsen in three specific instances where he “did not exercise prudent judgment.” One, he created his own retirement account without authorization, including back-dating documents, purposefully avoiding a paper trail, misusing CIA funds, and failing to inform the CIA Board of what he'd done. Two, he foolishly engaged in self-promotion on the cover of a national magazine, describing how he avoided the local travel agency to purchase airline tickets online. Three, in an incident that the CIA Board found “very disturbing,” Olsen refused to leave my offices after being asked to. He was also reprimanded for doubling his insurance benefits without prior authorization. By May 2001, his Chamber Board and the Council gave him the choice to resign or be fired. In December 2001, the Council was furious to discover that Olsen had hidden a $30,000 “reserve” slush fund. For four years, Olsen had purposefully and repeatedly supplied misleading financial statements to his Chamber Board and the Council, giving the impression that the Chamber – a private organization – was impoverished and needed additional grants of funding from the City. Apart from paying him $41,000 a year to operate the Chamber, the Chamber received up to $10,000 a year from the City.

Even after this scandal and dismissal, in April 2002 the Watertown Daily Times reported an incident where Olsen accosted a City employee in the City offices. It was so serious that the City Administrator ordered that Olsen have no further contact with City employees unless it was official business.

Into late 2002, Olsen remained as Jefferson's representative on the Jefferson County Economic Development Corporation (JCEDC), another quasi-public agency that viciously fought against being subject to open meetings and records.

As a member of the JCEDC Executive Committee, Olsen actively fought public scrutiny even in the face of demands from the County Board. The JCEDC refused to surrender records even after the state Attorney General's office said they must release them. John Mielke, a candidate for the Council in Fort Atkinson, was also on the JCEDC Board at this time.

With Olsen's consent and direction, in November 2002 the JCEDC chose to disband rather than be subject to public inspection. They purposefully destroyed the records I'd requested. They also left $10,000 in unpaid rent to the County. All this is documented in detail on my community web site at www.goJefferson.com.

Bob Coffman held the CIA job before Olsen. Coffman and Olsen are now the only two names on the ballot for the two at-large Council seats. It's hard for a write-in to beat a name on the ballot, but two write-in candidates are running: Barb Van Lieshout and Scott Howard.

At the first debate, every mayoral candidate lamented the lack of civility on the Council. Based on the above facts, you can see what Olsen will bring. No one wants more back-room deals, pocket-lining, bullying, or absence of insight. Olsen's reign of errors at the CIA, JDC, Chamber and JCEDC went on far too long because the past Council was afraid to do anything, thinking that he had the ear of the old guard in Jefferson. That past Council included Collin Stevens, Bob Coffman and John Wagner.

If we keep the same Council members, we should expect the same lack of results. They need to be held accountable for the weak and delayed response to Olsen's misdeeds. We'll all suffer the results of their inaction if Olsen takes a seat on the Council. This same sort of inability to deal with problems has left us without a City Administrator since July 2003.

If you want different results, then vote for new Council members. We can choose better candidates than Olsen and Coffman. I support Barb Van Lieshout and Scott Howard for the at-large Council seats.

I support Jim Schroeder for Mayor. He will take a hard line against incivility, bring a professional hand to the Mayor's job, and will actively oppose illegal back-room meetings.

Sincerely,

John J. Foust