Get Ready For Bigger Government, More Borrowing - - Financed By Stimulus Dollars - - And Guess Who's Behind it?
Now who would go off and promote more Big Guvmint these days?
Some liberal big-spender?
Must be a Democrat, for sure, right?
Nope: It's Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, who has hatched a scheme to create an economic development agency - - using stimulus funds (remember when he said he'd turn that money down) - - even though there is already the City of Milwaukee Department of Development doing that very thing just a few blocks away from Walker's courthouse office.
Steve Schultze at the Journal Sentinel had the story last week: I was out of town and missed it.
Now I'm sure this has nothing to do with Walker's bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination for Governor, nor will Walker see anything contradictory in taking stimulus funding, or expanding the role of government into the private sector.
County board supervisors from the City of Milwaukee, however, where most of the county's residents live and pay taxes, might wonder if the program's stated goal - - development in the county's smaller communities - - is in the city or county's best interests.
From here, it looks like a bad deal for city taxpayers - - kind of the way SEWRPC takes County money and focuses it on planning for the suburbs and faraway out-counties - - while duplicating ongoing city efforts.
It has all the trappings and policy substance of campaign brochure text, and little else.
2 comments:
Wow there is a surprise - a biased anti-Walker piece in the MJS by Steve Schultze.
Never saw that coming.
Btw the real scandal here is the fact that there is a Milwaukee Department of City Development wasting $4 million of our tax dollars. Can just imagine what kind of "work" those 201 employees are hard at.
If Walker was wise (which he is not) he would work cooperatively with Milwaukee's DCD and other municipalities on economic development. The empty Park East land speaks volumes about Walker's success, or lack thereof, in development. DCD has done a great job of getting development on the city portion of Park East while the county portion languishes and is full of weeds.
The fact that he can't jawbone more private venture capital into the area is an additional testament to his lackluster leadership skills. He's a master of the silly oversize veto pencil, but he is a complete failure at negotiating with either business or labor.
Indeed, his whole crowd seems completely lacking in modern entrepreneurial skills. Most of the entrepreneurial types are attracted to places like San Francisco Bay, Boston, Seattle, and DC. Diverse, vital, cosmopolitan cities with rail mass transit systems. Those places have the attributes that repulse the choo-choo chiding provincial followers of the Walker "movement."
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