WI Taxpayers Deserve Refund For Misspent Redistricting Payments

The GOP-controlled Legislature committed hundreds of thousands of dollars in state taxpayer funds to private law firms manage a mandatory, once-a-decade Legislative redistricting and re-mapping last year.

The process is always heavily political, but a Federal Court found a few days ago that this time the effort was needlessly secretive and further declared that the process illegally diluted voters' rights in two heavily-minority Milwaukee Assembly districts under the US Voting Rights Act.

Further, the judges apparently will quickly redrawn the boundaries of those districts to conform with the law because regularly-scheduled elections loom, yet the GOP has refused to reconvene an adjourned Legislature to repair their work.

So where is the refund to the taxpayers?

Suppose you hired a mechanic to overhaul your car before you took it on a cross-country trip, and the mechanic said the work performed would last ten years.

Then your car ran off the road with a seized engine almost immediately after the work was finished because the mechanic had filled the radiator with Dr. Pepper instead of antifreeze.

And then told you to go find another mechanic to fix it.

How long would it take you to ask for your money back, and to take the mechanic to court, if need be, to get it?