Empower Wisconsin | Dec. 7, 2020
MADISON — Racine’s health despot is so drunk with power she’s willing to defy a Wisconsin Supreme Court restraining order.
As Empower Wisconsin reported last week, health czar Dottie-Kay Bowersox sent an email to school administrators late last month telling them that her order to close Racine schools was still on, despite a Supreme Court ruling blocking it.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, representing parents and private school advocates, asked the court to hold the power-grabbing health department in contempt of court and charge the city $2,000 each day it defied the injunction.
As of Friday, Wisconsin’s highest court had not responded.
In the meantime, Bowersox threatened private elementary school Renaissance Lutheran School-Villa with fines if administrators went ahead with plans to reopen the school building. Bowersox said the school would have to pay $250 each day it defied the city’s Safer Racine Ordinance.
In a letter to parents obtained by the Racine Journal Times, Renaissance Lutheran said the Supreme Court had blocked the health department from closing Racine schools and forcing them to conduct virtual education. True, Bowersox sneered. But the order she issued is no longer in effect; it was rolled into the city ordinance.
These are the sorts of games Bowersox and the city’s liberal leaders have played throughout their reign of expanded pandemic-era powers.
Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin, said Racine’s defiance should come as little surprise. The city is run by Mayor Cory Mason, an ultra-liberal who got caught working with the local teachers union in a smear campaign against Racine’s successful school voucher program.
“They are drunk with power,” Bender said, “flexing their muscle in a time of pandemic.”
Bowersox seems to be enjoying the buzz. But she’s really just a tool of Racine’s liberal, big government establishment, increasingly willing to tread on liberty under the guise of public safety.
That’s why Dottie-Kay Bowersox is Empower Wisconsin’s Tool of the Week.
