Judge Tom Alisankus
From farm life in New York to the Municipal Court in Evansville, Judge Tom Alisankus has always found purpose in helping others. His decades on the bench reflect both strength and empathy.
Tom Alisankus, who some of you know as our Municipal Judge here in Evansville, was born in New Jersey. After his father had a heart attack and could no longer work when Tom was eight years old, the family moved to upstate New York near the Canadian border. They paid $13,500 for 280 acres, a house, a barn, and outbuildings. This was in 1968.
They initially tried farming and selling antiques. Tom’s mother was a registered nurse with a specialty in psychiatry, and the only family member earning an income at the time, since they knew nothing about farming. They then decided to open a restaurant, which, despite the great food, just wasn’t a money maker. They decided to add a bar and offer live music on the weekends—something the other bars in town did not do. Curiously, they named the restaurant, “The Refuge of Saints and Sinners,” but soon learned that many people thought it was a religious organization to help the poor. They added a second, smaller sign that said, “Restaurant and Bar”. After that, more people started coming in. With the addition of the bar and some unique radio ads, in only one year, they paid off all their debts. However, it was too physically draining, so they closed after two years and sold the restaurant and bar equipment.
Tom’s mother’s specialty was psychiatric nursing. At the time, the State of New York was downsizing the number of in-patient residents in its State Hospitals. These people were ready to live on their own but still needed a transitional environment for their continued treatment, as well as shelter and other services they needed. Since the Alisankus family had a big farmhouse with six bedrooms and two baths, they decided to take in some of the State Hospital patients and became what was referred to as a ‘halfway house’. It seemed like a good match given Tom’s mother’s training. They were allowed to take up to eleven patients. At that time, Tom was fourteen. The lodgers were not considered a threat to anyone’s safety. They just needed an atmosphere that would allow them to adjust to living outside of the State hospitals. However, one of the residents decided to threaten Tom’s mother with a chainsaw, and with the exception of three residents who had been with them from the beginning, that put an end to the transition home.
Tom’s school district had a total enrollment of approximately 400 students, K-12. His Senior class size was 32. Tom was class president in his junior and senior years, and the year following his graduation, he was elected to the district’s Board of Education. At the time, he was the youngest Board member of the state. Tom also became a member of the local volunteer fire department and was soon appointed as an Assistant Chief.
Regarding college, Tom was preparing to attend a nearby State University, as finances limited his options. However, with the almost nagging encouragement of his English teacher, Tom also agreed to apply to St. Lawrence University, a private college in Canton, NY. Tom thought the idea was foolish, in that even if he got accepted, there was no way he could afford it.
After his interview with St. Lawrence, Tom received a life-changing surprise: He had been nominated along with six other prospective incoming students to receive one of four full, academic scholarships for all four years. The seven applicants would be taken to New York City to be interviewed by business executives. The eight-hour trip to the City would begin early Monday morning. However, late Sunday afternoon, Tom realized he didn’t have an actual suit to wear to the interviews. Tom’s mother reached out to a clothing store owner that she knew and convinced him to open on a Sunday night and engage a tailor who delivered a suit to Tom in time to wear to New York.
Tom was one of four students to be awarded the full-ride scholarship. Needless to say, that made Tom’s decision to attend St. Lawrence pretty easy. So, in the fall of 1977, Tom enrolled. At the time, tuition, room, and board were $5,800/yr. (approximately $31K in today’s money). Tom also reassessed his description of his English teacher’s encouragement as ‘nagging.’ He was already engaging in ‘higher education’, and classes hadn’t even started yet.
Starting in his junior year, Tom was appointed as a Resident Assistant (“R.A.”), which meant he was in charge of all of the sophomore students on his floor in the dormitory. This was a paid position, so Tom had some extra spending money too! He double-majored in Psychology and Sociology, with a Minor in Education. That earned him a Bachelor of Science degree, and credentials that allowed him to teach in any State in the US.
Instead, he started out working in Wyoming as a “drilling fluid engineer”, except he wasn’t really an engineer. This was near the end of the oil boom in America. His title was “roving engineer”, because he traveled to several western states where the drill sites were located. His territory included Wyoming, Utah, Montana, North Dakota, and New Mexico. He stayed in hotels as he traveled around the West. In addition to his hotel rooms, his meals were also paid for as part of his compensation, so he had it pretty good as a young man. Needless to say, though, dates with women were few and far between. Or so he says.
After about a year, he decided he had lived out of a hotel long enough, so he finished up his “roving” duties in October of 1982. At that time, he was based in Casper, Wyoming. He was interested in law enforcement, so he joined the Sheriff’s Posse, an organization made up of fully sworn volunteers that assisted full-time deputies in their duties. Tom decided he liked law enforcement a lot, so the following January—when a new sheriff had been elected—Tom was hired to be a full-time deputy. He was sworn in, given a badge, and told to go buy a gun and the appropriate uniforms. He graduated first in his law enforcement academy class, and soon joined three other deputies per shift, protecting 5400 square miles of the county.
Two years later, Tom was promoted to Patrol Sergeant. He was also hired as a Forensic Investigator/Deputy Coroner by Dr. James Thorpen, a local pathologist who had been elected the County Coroner. He was sent to the St. Louis School of Medicine for a short time to receive his initial training. And, to complete the circle, Tom was placed in charge of the Sheriff’s Posse. With the blessing of the sheriff, Tom changed the organization to the “Sheriff’s Reserves”, and after convincing the State to change its rules, Tom orchestrated the State’s first part-time law enforcement academy for the Reserves, resulting in each of them receiving the exact same training as full time officers, and for the first time, the Reserve officers were fully-certified peace officers in the State of Wyoming.
It wasn’t long before Tom realized how complicated law enforcement really was—if you wanted to do it right. He thought that someday he would attend law school—not to practice law, but to be a better police officer. That decision became final one day, when Tom had asked the local prosecutor why he had decided to throw out one of Tom’s cases. The prosecutor told him that he “was just a deputy and wouldn’t understand.” Tom said, “I never wanted to be professionally looked down upon like that again.”
In what would be his last year in the sheriff’s department, Tom worked closely with Karla Baumgartner, the Director of Metro Animal Control, on a 13-count dog-fighting arrest Tom had made. That case ultimately prompted the State of Wyoming to upgrade dog fighting from a misdemeanor to a felony the following year.
Karla was from Stoughton and worked as the Director of the Dane County Humane Society. She had been recruited to Casper to help design Metro. After the dog-fighting convictions (side note: The prosecutor became known as “Mad-Dog” because of the time he put into the case; he eventually became the Attorney General for the State of Wyoming), Karla and Tom started dating; at their first lunch together, they both shared how they wanted to attend law school.
Tom and Karla entered the University of Wyoming College of Law in 1987. At the time, Wyoming residents paid $400 per semester in tuition. One description of law school that Tom thought had some merit is that during your first year, the professors scare you to death, in the second year, they work you to death, and in the third year, they bore you to death.
Tom had a full experience while at law school. Remember how Tom originally wanted to attend law school to be a better cop? He received the American Jurisprudence Award for Excellence in Criminal Procedure, given to the one student with the highest grade in the Criminal Procedure course. Also, Tom was hired as the lead Teaching Assistant for the Freshmen legal writing class. He received two additional academic scholarships. In the summer between his first and second year, Tom was awarded an internship as a student law clerk for the Chief Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court. (After graduating from law school, law clerks are attorneys who do legal work for appellate justices.) Their main role is to research and then write draft opinions for their justice. The justice can either modify or fully adopt the draft opinion as the official opinion of the justice.) Tom was also a member of the Law Review Staff, and was inducted into the “Order of the Coif”, the legal, academic honor society of law schools—in short, the law school version of Phi Beta Kappa. Tom’s favorite ‘work’ in law school, though, was his work-study job in the law school library—and he asked that I mention that in an homage to Ruth Ann Montgomery. And to complete his ‘full experience’, Tom and Karla were married in their second year of law school. Tom and Karla graduated from law school in 1990. Tom was 3rd in his class of 68.
To be closer to family, Tom and Karla moved back to Wisconsin, where Tom was hired as the Law Enforcement Coordinator for Blackhawk Technical College. Tom also applied for the Municipal Judge position in Evansville when Casey Nagey, then the current Judge, moved out of Evansville. Tom was appointed as Municipal Judge in June 1991 by Chris Eager, who was the Mayor at the time, and Tom has been reelected to serve as the Judge ever since.
Tom also became a part-time patrol officer for the City of Beloit, and through a grant, was assigned as the Neighborhood Service Officer for two at-risk neighborhoods in the City. When the grant ended, Tom then worked part-time in the winter to fill shifts. Tom also took cases from the Public Defender’s Office. However, after only two cases, the Public Defender’s Office believed there was at least an appearance of a conflict of interest to be a law enforcement officer and a Public Defender, so Tom had to make a choice, and Tom decided to continue doing police work and no longer takes assignments from the Public Defender’s office. With this extra time on his hands, Tom began teaching criminal justice courses at Concordia University in Madison. Tom left BTC and was hired as a Professor of Criminal Justice at Rock Valley College in Rockford. This was a teaching position that allowed Tom to work in his Beloit Neighborhood Service Officer role full-time in the summer, when he wasn’t teaching.
One day, the Beloit Police Chief asked Tom to come into his office and close the door. The Chief said, “Tomorrow, we are going to arrest the Asst. City Attorney on two felony counts of fraud. The City Attorney asked me if he could borrow you to prosecute the cases in the Beloit Municipal Court. You’d be doing us all a favor.” Tom had enough police experience to know that when the Chief asks you for a favor, you don’t say no. So, Tom remained a sworn officer, but stopped his law enforcement shifts to become the Acting Assistant City Attorney until a permanent replacement could be found. Once a new Acting City Attorney was hired, the City created the position of “Special Prosecutor” for Tom. His duties in that position included seizure of drug houses and acting as the liaison between the City Attorney’s Office and the Police Department.
After several months, though, the roof caved in on Tom’s life. First, his Mom died. Around the same time, Beloit hired a new city manager who had a different philosophy from Tom’s. Soon, Tom found out that as part of an apparent deal with the police union, the City would do away with part-time officers. Additionally, the new manager didn’t see the need to continue funding the Special Prosecutor’s position. In short order, Tom had lost his Mom, his job that he loved, and 1/3 of his income.
“I quickly spiraled down into a pretty dark place for several years,” Tom said. “At one point, I was on three different anti-depressants at the same time. I just couldn't stop the spiral. It was like trying to start a car that just wouldn’t catch. Until one day it did. Depression is such an awful place. I don’t know that I can ever repay my family for their patience and support while I dug myself out of this—did I mention this was a pretty dark place?”
In retrospect, though, Tom believes that all of his unique life experiences helped make him a much better Judge. He said, “I got a call one day in the middle of all this from an area merchant, telling me that my check hadn’t cleared. I quickly went down and took care of it, thus avoiding any possibility of a citation. But I realized—learned—that in MOST cases, the one thing people don’t need when they are cited for passing a bad check is an additional debt of $330, which is the standard penalty when convicted for that violation. If people can show that they’ve made good on a bad check prior to coming to Court, and they have a reasonable story of the circumstances leading up to their citation, I now rarely impose the full penalty. I learned that the hard way.”
Another area where Tom found a silver lining to his experience with depression is dealing with kids in Juvenile Court. “It’s disheartening to me to see the number of kids in our community that are on some type of prescribed drug to treat their anxiety, or depression, or ADHD, or whatever new syndrome that is being diagnosed these days. Sometimes you can see the hopelessness in their faces. I’m very open with them about my own experiences; I want them to see there’s hope, and to never give up.”
Tom could fill a book with the cases that have come before him in court. Perhaps his most notable case, though, was the young man cited for a violation that, had it been prosecuted as a crime in circuit court rather than an ordinance violation in municipal court, could have landed him in jail for up to nine months. To make a point, rather than imposing the standard monetary fine, Tom sentenced him to 24 hours in his bathroom—very roughly equivalent to a jail cell. He could have a Bible to read. And his parents agreed to cook him some very bland meals. Oh, and the Judge reminded him that when he had to USE the bathroom, he had to make sure the door was open; no privacy in jail. Well, the story ended up on “Paul Harvey News”. Tom said, “I spoke with Mrs. Harvey, who did all of the legwork for Paul’s stories. I asked her if she could send me a copy of the recording, but she politely told me they never sent those. However, she did send me a transcript.” The story aired October 20th, 1998. About five or ten years ago, Tom was shopping at the Piggly Wiggly, when a woman came up to him, and introduced herself as the young man’s aunt. Tom said, “She told me how well the young man was doing these days, and how ‘the sentence’ often comes up at family gatherings. “It definitely had an impact on him”, she said.”
Tom said that communities that have municipal courts are fortunate, though he’s changed his mind as to why. Here’s how he summed it up: “I used to say that it was about the revenue. But after only a couple of years on the bench, the real benefit became clear: The community gets to solve its own problems. For example, when I first became a judge, the high school was having a serious truancy problem. I suggested that all of the stakeholders (police, school personnel, and the judge) should meet and come up with a plan to address the issue. We implemented the plan, and the truancy rate dropped from near 20% to under five percent. Without a municipal court, those cases would go to the circuit court in Janesville. No disrespect, but do you think they would really care about Evansville’s truancy problem? They are dealing with serious crimes and simply don’t have the time to address local issues like this. We do.” Tom said that the ‘stakeholder’ meeting morphed into an annual meeting every year before the fall term starts, and that it remains a valuable tool to address issues involving students.
Tom is starting his 35th year as our Municipal Court Judge. I asked him how long he saw himself staying, and this is what he said: “That’s a tough one, because in some ways I think I’m just starting to get good at this. Knowing when to leave, though, is one of the most difficult parts of the job. But I think you need to be cognizant of the fact that everything has a ‘best if used by’ date.”
In the meantime, Tom and Karla live on a small farmette just outside the City. Their oldest daughter, Cheyenne, lives in Duluth with her husband and Tom and Karla’s first grandchild. Their youngest daughter, Sammi, lives with her fiancé here in Evansville. They have two dogs and a bunch of horses.
Tom continues to serve as Evansville’s Municipal Judge to this day. If you come before him in Court, you will certainly be dealt with in a fair manner by a man who has been empathetic towards people for a long time.
