| taken the position as Doyle's de facto chief operating officer in charge of the day-to-day operation of a governmental organization that has a biennial budget of $48.8 billion and tens of thousands of employees in Wisconsin's agencies, universities and voc-tech system. It is the biggest business entity located in the state of Wisconsin. Morgan is unassuming because right off the bat, he comes across as a team player. While he does like having the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the citizens of Wisconsin, Morgan also clearly understands that he is a member of Governor Doyle's team. The fact that Morgan is a former football player may have something to do with his team spirit. Although he was born in Alabama and spent his early childhood days there, Morgan's family moved to Chicago where he went to middle and high school. It was at Chicago Lane Tech where Morgan began to learn the skills that would serve him well later in life. "It was known for a couple of things," Morgan recalled during an interview with The Capital City Hues. "Number one, it graduated a lot of engineers. The school had an engineering focus and a lot of good athletes. You wonder the reason why a lot of good athletes came out of the school. Well, the pool was so big. It was an all-boys school, 5,000 boys. You should be able to find one or two good athletes out of the group. We had good athletic teams and we had good academics. We found ourselves in a blessed place where we could perform on the field of competition in athletics and we had the academics to get into whatever school we wanted to go to." Morgan was recruited by several universities to play football. Two of his choices were Michigan and Wisconsin. "When I was thinking about what college I would go to, I ran into a wonderful business person in Chicago, Percy Miller, CEO of the North American Paper Company, who had a profound impact on my decision to come here to the University of Wisconsin," Morgan said. "He came to Madison on a football scholarship and played running back for the Badgers from 1974-1977 and received his B.A. in communication arts. While Morgan had a brief stint with the Chicago Bears before he went on injured reserve and signed on with the Philadelphia Eagles before leaving professional football before leaving the next year, he always has considered himself a Badger. "I'm a Wisconsin guy," Morgan emphasized. "We've been season ticket holders for about 15 years. My wife Diana sees all the games. I see as many as I can get to. We still are very much involved in athletics as spectators here in Madison. I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity to play football at the university, but I'm doubly grateful for the great education I got here. I was so happy with my experience at the university here that we encouraged our daughters to attend the UW-Madison. They are both UW-Madison graduates. I have a sister who is a UW-Madison Law School graduate. So we have a lot of Badger backers in our family." When Morgan left the Eagles, his wife Diana wanted to move to Milwaukee where Morgan landed a job with Abbot Labs. After three years, he enrolled at the UW Law School and obtained his degree. He developed broad experience in public service after that. "I went back to Milwaukee, joined Michael McCann's office as an assistant DA and worked there for three years," Morgan recalled. "Then I entered private practice in Milwaukee and then I joined John Norquist's administration as deputy director of the Dept. of Administration. That was my first job in the executive branch of government. I don't know if I am at full circle yet. I worked on a couple of assignments in Milwaukee government. For almost 10 years. I was director of the Fire and Police Commission, director of Intergovernmental Relations Division, which is the chief lobbyist for the city. I spent half of my career with the city as the commissioner on the Dept. of City Development, which is the real estate/economic development arm of the city of Milwaukee. I really enjoyed that work. I then worked in philanthropy at the Helen Bader Foundation." Morgan caught the eye of then Attorney General James Doyle while Morgan was at the foundation. When Doyle was elected governor, he asked Morgan to head his transition team and help put together Doyle's management team for his first term. "I felt this was a wonderful thing," Morgan reflected. "I had the opportunity to have an impact on the direction of the Doyle administration during his first term. I felt it was a high honor to act in that role. It turned out to be a pretty good experience. We were successful, I think, in identifying and then attracting stellar candidates for the Governor's cabinet and other positions. The Governor believes very strongly that his cabinet should be a reflection of the diversity of the state. He made that very clear early on. I think we did a real good job in finding a multitude of very strong minority and non-minority candidates. As we worked through the process, it turned out to be a good process that yielded no only a very diverse cabinet and government, but also a very strong group of people that I feel proved successful in helping the Governor put in place some policies in his first term that obviously directly impacted on his ability to be successful in running for reelection." As it turned out, Governor Doyle appointed more people of color to decision-making posts in his administration than any governor in the history of Wisconsin, and quite possibly, in the history of the United States. While there could have been some reactionary sentiment to the large number of appointments of people of color, Morgan didn't see any. Competency was foremost on their minds. "One of the things that I learned about the people of Wisconsin is that these are folk who really are about looking at the person's work and using that as a barometer on the abilities of the individual," Morgan said. "I think over time as the people of Wisconsin got to know members of the cabinet, whether they were from Milwaukee or other places in the state and whatever their ethnicity was, the most salient factor they looked at was 'Are they doing a good job for the people of the state?' And at the end of the day, many agreed we were doing a good job. I think it was an added bonus that it was a very diverse group of people. And I think at the end of the day, folks were proud of the fact we had such a diverse cabinet. I can say from my own personal experience, I've had the opportunity to travel to almost every corner of the state of Wisconsin and I have always felt welcome. I've always felt that when we sat around the table putting the issue for discussion in play, the folks were more concerned about where we were going and what my thoughts were than the fact I am an African American." Morgan served as secretary of the Dept. of Revenue during Doyle's first term. He played a vital role in implementing a variety of tax reforms to support the Governor's Grow Wisconsin plan and Affordability Agenda including: the institution of the single factor corporate sales tax; elimination of a tax on businesses that acted as a disincentive for business growth and job creation; the establishment of a new venture capital tax credit; and a series of initiatives aimed at providing tax relief for middle-class Wisconsin families. In November 2006, Doyle won re-election by a 52-46 percent margin over Mark Green, an apparent affirmation of Doyle's policies and the record of the management team he had put in place. Doyle once again asked Morgan to head up his transition team. Doyle and Morgan had a series of talks about where Morgan might best be placed during Doyle's second term. "We decided maybe a good place for someone like myself who has governmental experience from the local and state level -- having been the Dept. of Revenue secretary and had been involved in many of the issues related to the operations of the government -- and I had gotten to know him very well and what direction he wanted to take the state of Wisconsin that perhaps the secretary of the Dept. of Administration (DOA) would be a good place if I wanted to continue. I thought DOA was an agency that works closely with the governor in guiding the apparatus of government and the resources of government in the policy direction that the governor wants to go in. So I was very flattered that he would consider me for the position. And of course, given the scope and the important work of the department that this would be a way I would like to assist the Governor." As was said before, Morgan is the consummate team player. He knows he is carrying out Doyle's agenda -- but it is an agenda that is in sync with his own values and feelings of where state government should go. "I think my job is to work with this Governor to ensure that his policy objectives are reached," Morgan emphasized. "This Governor has made it very, very clear that education, economic development -- which is closely aligned with having a good educational system -- and a good energy policy are all some of the things that he feels very strongly about. My job is to help ensure that we align the operations of the government in a way that allows us to reach those objectives. "Whether it is health insurance, education, economic development and our Grow Wisconsin plan, k-12 education or the university system or tech school policies, our job here at DOA is to work with my colleagues in the cabinet to make sure we are moving in the direction he would like for us to move," Morgan continued. "In addition to that though, our job is also to look at the operations of the government and work with the governor's office to ensure that we're operating in a way that allows us to be more productive, to continue to evolve our systems and use of tools like technology to ensure we are capturing productivity, that we are able to deliver a high quality service to the people of Wisconsin at as low of a cost as we can. We try to provide the kind of tax relief that the people of the State of Wisconsin deserve. We have this operational thing we call DOA. We need to be very, very efficient, encourage productivity, use tools that make sense to help us be productive so that we can get at those policy objectives, so we can align resources to get at those things that are important to the state." One thing that has kept Morgan in Doyle's administration is his colleagues on the cabinet level. "The secretaries of all of the departments work long hours," Morgan said. "And one of the reasons we are willing to work long hours is because we believe in the mission, we believe in the policies, we believe in the Governor's policy objectives. The other thing is we have a good team. We actually enjoy working with one another. It's not that we don't have hard discussions with one another. But for the most part, it's a very collegial group. It's a group that enjoys working as a team." Morgan downplayed his status as the first African American to hold the position of DOA and is impatient for a new era of the multicultural workplace to begin. "It's a great honor being the first African American to be the secretary of DOA, but as I think about it, we should all hope that we're at a place where we don't have to celebrate "firsts" very often anymore, that having African Americans, Latinos, and women in high offices in state government will become part of the culture here in state government and part of the culture in the private sector," Morgan said. "We need to get to a place where there's no need to celebrate these "firsts." I can't help but feel good about having reached this position, but I just really look forward to the day when we don't have to talk about how do you feel about being "first." I would love to have a great piece written by you on the fifth or sixth DOA or Revenue or head of the big corporation where it is not out of the ordinary so that we all celebrate it not so much because it's the first, but because we have a good person in the job doing the right kinds of things." After sitting down and talking with Morgan for a half hour, one gets the sense that he is a very private person even though he works under the public glare that comes with public service. Outside of his high visibility in the Doyle administration, Morgan remains out of the public eye even though he and his wife moved to Madison three and a half years ago. He is the quintessential family man. When asked about being a role model for today's African American youth, Morgan felt it all begins at home. "If I am a good role model for my children, I'm probably a good role model for all children," Morgan observed. "When I think about being a good role model, I think about the kids I have the most influence on who used to see me 24/7 before they graduated. How we conduct our lives, how we raise our children, how we go about doing those things that are important every day, you need to think about how you do that because those people closest to you, those children of yours are the folks on whom you want to have influence. And the icing on the cake is that if you do it well and you have the opportunity to be in the public eye, some of the things you do can't help but serve as a good role model for other children and other individuals and people around the state." Morgan is circumspect about his future plans. Like a football running back, Morgan takes the opportunity to advance as it presents itself to him. "I'm not one of those individuals that tries to plan," Morgan said about his career. "I'm reminded of that old saying 'Man plans, God laughs.' My personal approach to a career is toprepare yourself to take advantage of whatever the next opportunity might be. When that opportunity comes, hopefully you'll be in a place where you can take advantage of it." As secretary of DOA, Morgan has plenty on his plate. And when he leaves state government, more than likely because of the position he holds, there will be plenty of opportunities to consider in a career of public service. |
| Managing "State of Wisconsin, Inc." By Jonathan Gramling |
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| Michael Morgan became the first African American to head the Wis. Dept. of Administration this past January. Michael Morgan who was tabbed by Governor James Doyle to be the secretary of Administration back in December is a very unassuming person even though he has |
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