The Madison Area Apartment Association has taken responsibility for an election flier attacking Progressive Dane on hot-button local issues.

The mailer, received Saturday and Monday by voters in districts with contested aldermanic campaigns, was marked as authorized and paid for by Citizens for Responsible Government.

No such committee is registered with the city, but Citizens for Reasonable Government, made up of members of the apartment association's board of directors, is registered.

Noah Fiedler, executive director of the apartment association, said Monday that it was likely a misprint that attributed the flier to Citizens for Responsible Government instead of Citizens for Reasonable Government.

"It's one and the same," said Fielder. He said Citizens for Reasonable Government is an independent expenditure fund of the apartment association.

The flier, accusing Progressive Dane of opposing background checks on day care providers and prospective tenants and fighting an ordinance to get drug dealers off the streets, was distributed in districts where Progressive Dane-backed candidates Barbara Vedder, Matt Sloan and Kent Palmer are running.

The flier also was distributed in east side District 15, where Randy Glysch is challenging incumbent David Schneider, and in District 16, where Helen Marks Dicks is competing with conservative Judy Compton for a vacant seat.

"The perception by the fund members is that Progressive Dane is working for its own agenda, and they don't believe constituents are aware of that fact," Fiedler said. "They wanted to bring it to light."

While Progressive Dane leaders have called the mailings "absolutely false" and "inflammatory," Fiedler insisted that fliers are accurate.

"For Progressive Dane to stand up now and say they didn't do this is disingenuous at best."

Gary Gorman, a local developer, landlord and member of the apartment association's board of directors, said he was not familiar with any election flier put out by the apartment association.

Gorman said he donated $5,000 to the apartment association's election conduit, which was to work to elect City Council members "less likely to attack our interests."

Gorman said the landlord's group revved up for the election because of what has been "a constant stream of anti-property owner legislation."

"We have not been participants in the political process," said Gorman, who added that he pressed for the group to become more active.

Gorman said he is not certain who and what Progressive Dane is, although some members of the City Council, identified with Progressive Dane, "seem to have an agenda to attack property owners."

Gorman says he is mystified by what he considers Progressive Dane's anti-property-owner platform. "I think there's the thought that if you hurt the property owner you help the renter, but I think that's flawed logic."

Burt Dehaven, immediate past president of the apartment association and a member of Citizens for Reasonable Government, also professed to know nothing about the flier.

"I'm not crazy about something going out under my name, without an opportunity for input," he said.

Of the spin put on the issues in the flier, Dehaven commented: "It's election time, things get slanted so they are not necessarily false, but not necessarily true either."

He said the apartment association determined back in 1995 to become more active politically, but that the recent influx of dollars was prompted by the controversial housing measures backed this year by Progressive Dane.

Dehaven says he's not sure what the Progressive Dane agenda is, but "it's difficult to get a listen from alders who proclaim themselves to be Progressive Dane. That's all we're looking for."