Valarie Hill, William Crowley face off in Milwaukee municipal judge race

Bruce Vielmetti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MIlwaukee Municipal Judge Valarie Hill won her race against challenger William Crowley.

Milwaukee Municipal Judge Valarie Hill easily turned back three challengers in a February primary vote, polling nearly half the ballots cast in a low turnout of less than 9%.

The rest of the votes were fairly evenly divided among Brian Michel (17.5%), Kail Decker (15.5%) and William Crowley (19.2%), with Crowley advancing with Hill to the April 4 general election. Decker is now publicly supporting Crowley. Michel said he is not taking a position.

So if all non-Hill voters coalesce behind Crowley, Hill could have an electoral fight on her hands. And that's how the veteran jurist is treating the race, recently drawing a sports analogy amid March Madness — that a big win in your last game means nothing in the next round.

"I've made no changes to my campaign. It's the same strategy," Hill said. "I've stayed focused, that I'm the more experienced candidate."

At a recent candidates' forum, Hill defended her 13-year tenure on the bench, challenging Crowley's claims — made by all her primary opponents — that she is disrespectful to those in her courtroom and fails to inform indigent people they have options to paying fines, and noted he's never even been to her courtroom.

In the primary, Hill's opponents stressed the need for a new attitude in Branch 1, where they cited her demeanor and record of sending the fewest people to community service among the three branches, leading to more unpaid fines and resulting arrest warrants.

"I've always been direct, straightforward, no-nonsense, however you want to describe it," she said.

Hill, 53, is a native of Ohio who attended Ohio State University and then law school at University of Akron. She came to Milwaukee to become an assistant public defender. After seven years, she was appointed a Circuit Court commissioner in 1998 and elected to the municipal bench in 2004. She lives on the north side.

Hill says it was her idea to consolidate all of one person's outstanding citations in one of the court's three branches, so the violator can make a single $20 payment to get an extension to pay all fines, instead of having to make two or three such minimum payments.

She also said the court has had success with "Warrant Withdrawal Wednesdays," a November experiment to let people with outstanding arrest warrants because of unpaid municipal fines get them withdrawn by coming to court and agreeing to a payment plan. She said the court plans to host another warrant-dropping event at another location.

Crowley says there should never have been a need to hold such events, that too many people who are just too poor to pay keep getting fined, then hit with arrest warrants that can land them in jail and speed the downward spiral into more serious legal trouble.

Hill countered that may not be true, since the overwhelming majority of people who came to the warrant-dropping Wednesdays chose payment plans over community service and got their warrants because they just never came to court the first time.

Crowley said that illustrates another problem he said he would work to correct — better, simpler communication to people when they first get tickets. In the primary, Michel noted that the Municipal Court basically rejected the results of a mapping project by a group of multiple stakeholders looking at ways to improve court operations.

Crowley, 30, is a staff attorney at Disability Rights Wisconsin and has used a wheelchair since a car accident that killed his mother and stepfather when he was a child. Originally from the Chicago area, he is a graduate of Carthage College and Marquette University Law School in 2011. Before joining DRW, he worked on compliance issues for mortgage foreclosures. He serves on the board of the Wisconsin chapter of the ACLU.

He said it was gratifying to make it through the primary as a relatively unknown, first-time candidate. He plans to keep reaching out for whatever endorsements Hill hasn't wrapped up and to voters who he said responded well to his message of change.

Crowley concedes he has far less experience but stresses that during his more limited career he's always advocated for the "disadvantaged and marginalized," and that while he hasn't litigated many cases, he's been able to mediate solutions among parties in most matters without resorting to litigation.

"I would bring that perspective to the court," he said.

He notes Municipal Court is less formal than Circuit Court and judges usually deal with residents who rarely have lawyers. "It's about getting the people in front of you," he said, "connecting with them, making sure they know what’s going and reaching the best resolution."

Municipal Court hears those ticketed for ordinance violations, such as disorderly conduct, shoplifting, building and zoning problems, and first-offense drunken driving. Judges serve four-year terms and get paid $133,289 annually.