Assembly Budget Vote Makes Mockery Of Candidate Walker's Pledges

The GOP-controlled State Assembly, having done its horse-trading behind closed doors and passed a $66-billion budget at 3:00 a.m this morning, broke Scott Walker's sanctimonious open-governing-and-budgeting promises to the Lakeland Times [see "Transparency," towards the bottom] and posted on his 2010 campaign website.

In fact I've even proposed - in terms of the budget process, but it would apply to anything - other things that would help transparency," he said. "I don't think there should be any votes in closed caucus, on any issue. If a county board or school board can't discuss a budget in private, then the state Legislature certainly should not. There should not be any closed caucuses on the budget."

"And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can't vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning," Walker said. "They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight. But they did it on purpose because not only do they not want average persons to know, they don't want reporters with deadlines to know - after 10 you miss the nightly TV news and you're not in print for the daily newspapers. They push it back on a Saturday, hoping people won't read about things like that"