We're even broker now than when Scott Walker declared "we're broke".
For more than a year, the state's flagship jobs agency failed to track whether businesses are repaying loans from state taxpayers - leaving the public in the dark about how much they are owed on a total of $8 million in past-due loans to 99 businesses.
The blunder - only the latest in a whole series of problems at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. - began at nearly the same time as the quasi-public authority championed by Gov. Scott Walker took over for the state's previous jobs agency.
As Scott Walker declared on election night, 2010, "Wisconsin is open for business". Yup. Shady business.
Like his fellow Republicans, Walker thinks government sucks. Of course, like fellow Republicans he spend his entire career as part of that sucky government, collected government paychecks, and did his damndest to get elected to run an entire state government that he though sucked. Maybe if the GOP wants to know why government sucks they should just look in the nearest mirror or or other reflective surface.
Since government sucks, in his not so humble and GOP shared opinion, Scott Walker dissolved a decades old Wisconsin state agency, the Department of Commerce and created his own - The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp which would be a hybrid of government and private business with a board primarily composed of businessmen. It's been a pile of misery since the start and continues to be an ongoing disaster.
Of course, let the ass-covering begin:
"Clearly, a ball was dropped here a year ago but the system worked in uncovering it," said Murray (Ryan Murray, the WEDC's chief operating officer and former Deputy Chief of Staff who was brought in after the previous bungling of the agency), who went on to clarify what he meant. "The system to detect this worked but the system to collect on loans obviously did not."
But Democrats were incredulous at the failure at the WEDC, which has been repeatedly touted by Walker as an agency that would be run like a business.
"It's a horrendous abuse of the public trust," Rep. Jon Richards (D-Milwaukee) said. "If it had happened at a private business, heads would roll, not just one head but many heads."
(information in italics is my addition for clarity)
This is going to be big time ass-covering, too, since Scott Walker appointed himself as chairman of WEDC.
Imagine a bank losing track of even a small loan, much less $8 million of them. Regulators would be parachuting in. Not so much with this bunch.
Naturally, it doesn't help when WEDC tried to hide the missing $8 million at a recent hearing in front of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee:
Murray said that he had informed Walker, who is also the chairman of the WEDC, late last week about the loan problems and that on Wednesday he had informed the WEDC's board members about it. A spokeswoman for Walker did not respond to a request for comment.
But Paul Jadin, the head of the WEDC, didn't mention the blunder when he testified at length Wednesday morning before the Legislature's Joint Audit Committee, which was holding a hearing on an earlier audit of the WEDC that focused largely on whether the agency was being transparent and accountable to taxpayers about its subsidies to businesses.
Murray, who was also present at the hearing, said that Jadin didn't discuss the issue because WEDC officials wanted to first inform the agency's board. The WEDC board will take up the issue at its Friday board meeting.
(bolding is mine)
This isn't the first problem that this quasi private group has contended with in its very brief existence.
The state's economic development agency drew headlines this summer when the state had to suspend and restart bidding on a state contract after it was revealed that the WEDC had offered one of the bidders, Skyward of Stevens Point, tax credits if it won the contract.
The agency drew more headlines after federal officials recently raised concerns that for eight months the WEDC spent nearly $10 million without legal authority. WEDC board members criticized Walker appointees to the agency for not informing them of those concerns until after the issue was uncovered by the news media.
A director for the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department detailed the mishandling of public funds in May and August letters to the governor's administration secretary, Mike Huebsch. Huebsch responded in a Sept. 12 letter, but the matter was not broached with the WECD board when it met eight days later.
Jadin announced last month he is leaving the agency on Nov. 1 to take a job with Thrive, an economic development agency based in Madison. Murray, a former deputy chief of staff to Walker, was brought over to WEDC in a July shake-up of top officials there.
And, naturally, donors to Scott Walkers campaign have easily moved to the front of the line to cash in on benefits of this new organization.
After all, this is FitzWalkerstan.
Update:
And there's more here. Federal trouble.
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is still working on another problem with federal officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, who slammed WEDC late last month over its failure to follow federal law and their own policies in issuing economic development grants.
(bolding is mine)
Uh oh. The Feds don't respond to Wisconsin Republican bullying tactics to resolve or supress issues.
"Gov. Walker's WEDC has proven to be as unaccountable and unsuccessful at getting the job done for Wisconsin as critics said it would be," said Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now. "Wisconsin is among the worst states in the nation in creating jobs under Walker and WEDC, and a steady stream of revelations show a poorly run agency that can't even keep track of the grants and loans it's giving out."
Walker is the chairman of the WEDC. His spokesman Jocelyn Webster could not be reached for comment.
Despite the clear waste, abuse, and fraud of at least $8 million taxpayer dollars, this isn't sinking in to members of the public here. Imagine if this happened under a Democratic administration. Oh, the whining and rendering of garments that would be unending ....
Update 2:
Still crickets from Governor Walker.
A spokeswoman said Thursday that Walker, the chairman of the WEDC and the champion of creating it, would not be available Thursday for an interview. The governor, who learned of the issue late last week, hasn't yet issued a statement on it.
Learned of the issue last week and no statement available? Cancelled interview? Well, he's been making his usual rounds on RW talk radio around the state, but can't seem to spare a minute to
spew some bullshit issue a statement or answer some questions from the media. Typical.
Update 3: Walker Speaks Edition:
The crap has hit the fan so forcefully that even Scott Walker has finally emerged from his rathole to promise dramatic moves to "fix" the problems.
Following a stunning revelation that millions in past due loans had been ignored by state officials for more than a year, Gov. Scott Walker vowed Thursday to take aggressive action at the embattled state jobs agency that he has championed.
"Being a good steward of taxpayers' money while helping people create jobs is my top priority. With that in mind, I will be discussing a series of dramatic moves with the board of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. at our meeting on Friday," Walker said in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Walker spokeswoman Jocelyn Webster said that Walker would save the details of his proposals for the WEDC board.
Of course, those pesky details will be handled outside of the public view. And, one of the newest members of the board, State Senate
Minority (hahahaha, I just love the sound of that) Leader Scott Fitzgerald has to weigh in, too.
Despite the comments by Klug, Fitzgerald, the Senate Republican leader, downplayed the finding, saying that there was no impropriety or misappropriated money and questioning whether Democrats had manufactured their outrage.
"There's no accusation about impropriety. This is about accounting. Beyond that, I think there's some politics in play," Fitzgerald said.
Riiiight! Manufactured outrage on the part of Democrats? Project much? How completely Republican of you.
The politics that are in play are Republican in origin - dissolve a state agency that had been doing a good job with a "private" board given access to tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to handle, rush it through a fully Republican dominated State Legislature and hope that things will be just peachy.
Sorry, I'm not buying this bottle of snake oil no matter how hard you try to sell it.
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