Bauer Listed Among Wisconsin's Most Influential Citizens

Milwaukee - In its end-of-year Sunday edition, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "Crossroads" section of December 27, 1998 listed Kurt Bauer as one of the most influential Wisconsin Citizens of the 20th century.

The company into which Dr. Bauer is place is quite heady: Aldo Leopold, leading exponent of the principle of ecology; Edwin Witte, called the father of Social Security; U.S. Senator and Wisconsin governor, the father of Earth Day in 1970; Robert LaFollette, another Wisconsin governor who became a U.S. Senator, for his progressive movement politics which helped Wisconsin lead the nation to adopt workers compensation and show that open, clean government can work; Frank Lloyd Wright, the most famous architect of all time; Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine, famous Broadway actors for almost 50 years; Melvin Laird, U.S. Secretary of Defense and other significant posts; Victor Berger, turn of the century socialist and staunch crusader for social legislation and clean government.

Bauer was nominated and described by David Meissner, executive director of the Public Policy Forum in Milwaukee. The group was founded in 1913 as a Milwaukee area government watchdog under the name Citizens Governmental Research Bureau. The group, traditionally funded by prominent citizens, changed its name in the past decade in order to be broader in scope than just taxes and spending efficiency.

Meissner highlights Bauer's contribution to the Wisconsin Century by identifying Bauer's extraordinary 35 years of service as executive director of SEWRPC, still headquartered in Waukesha. That service included helping SEWRPC set the national model for regional planning. Meissner credits SEWRPC with integrating public works, transportation, environmental, and land use planning into a comprehensive approach that deals with growth and the evolving needs of the seven counties that make up SEWRPC. Bauer is also credited with taking the environmental corridor concept and making it operational in land use planning.