Evers to close special pay window for Walker boondogglia

Remember those stories about WEDC giving the lion's share of your money to Walker donors, or to businesses who weren't vetted, sent jobs overseas, or never created them?

Like high-end Kestrel airplanes

to be assembled in a WEDC-funded factory in Superior that was never built.

But did produce work for attorneys:

The Wisconsin package for Kestrel included a $2 million loan from WEDC in 2012 and another $2 million federally funded state small business credit incentive loan; Kestrel has repaid approximately $865,500 on the former. 

The company also owes the city of Superior $2.2 million and Douglas County $500,000.
The bigger part of the deal was tens of millions of dollars in state-backed tax credits that Kestrel planned to use to leverage private financing, provided on a sliding scale tied to the number of jobs the company created. 

Had the Kestrel K-350 actually entered production and the estimated workforce of more than 600 been hired, those could have amounted to close to $20 million in state job-creation tax credits. But Kestrel's payroll never reached one-tenth of that and the actual employment tax credits paid topped out at just over $700,000. 

Another part of the deal, for up to $90 million in federal tax credits facilitated by the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA), collapsed, with Kestrel only receiving about $9 million of those credits.

Sorry: that register and pay station is closing. Borrowers are redirected to the private sector.