Figure out while changing the mailman directory to be owned by mailman made the correct footer text appear. It looks as though without those permissions the Handler Dlists was called later (footer-text was not defined when it got to decorate, but it was later.).
From another bug that I marked "won't fix:
Figure out while changing the mailman directory to be owned by mailman made the correct footer text appear. It looks as though without those permissions the Handler Dlists was called later (footer-text was not defined when it got to decorate, but it was later.).