The old tax swap idea, sold as 'reform.'
And Walker has opposed this sort of thing before.
Another flip-flop.
You can see right through Walker.
{Update: Walker shoots down the trial balloon. Keeping that transition on the tracks has been difficult.)
As I have noted often on this blog, the US EPA has established a 2012 deadline for the S. S. Badger, the last of the Great Lakes coal-fired steamers, to convert to a cleaner fuel.
The Badger also dumps its coal ash overboard, another in a list of environmental issues raised by the ship's power source.
The fire at the coal pile in Manitowoc where the ship docks and obtains some of its fuel for round trip runs during the season to Ludington, MI won't help the company in its effort to resist the no-coal EPA deadline.
That coal pile has been the source of pollution issues at the Manitowoc harbor. Documentation, here.
Basically, Petri tells the Journal Sentinel he doesn't believe in anything, is completely malleable and toadies to Jim Sensenbrenner.
Noted earlier, here.
And here.
Let's talk aviation and Waukesha for a moment, and no, this is not about its airport, Crites Field.
It's about the Waukesha Water Utility and its April application for Lake Michigan water that, so far, the Wisconsin DNR finds deficient, and about which Waukesha is so touchy that it canceled a meeting with the DNR last week when it discovered that the public - - horrors! - - wanted to observe.
This indicates that Waukesha has a serious case of NIH syndrome.
I'll explain - - but it has nothing to do with the National Institutes of Health.
When I was a reporter at the old Milwaukee Journal I developed a specialty investigating aviation accidents.
One of the persistent themes: the Federal Aviation Administration's foot-dragging and hostility to changes in procedures, manufacturing and operations suggested by the independent National Transportation Safety Board.
In the aviation business, people said the FAA had "NIH" syndrome - - "Not Invented Here."
In other words, while Waukesha has had a number of set-piece, Kabuki-theater power point presentations and public meetings on the application, it knows that a technical discussion with a DNR working group might highlight problems already cited by the DNR with the application - - see the text and correspondence posted at the DNR's dedicated Waukesha water application here - - are similar to the problems raised with the application by environmental observers and groups more than a year ago.
In fact, the DNR said it did not understand why Waukesha wanted to close the meeting.
Is this the way to win the DNR's confidence and get the application moving forward when the application is the first under a new US-Canadian Great Lakes water management Compact?
And it is the DNR that would be the transmitter of the application to the eight states who must vote unanimously to approve that application - - with the consultation of two Canadian provinces.
Had Waukesha embraced the environmental observers, the application would probably be already fine-tuned and past the DNR's continuing resistance.
That's why NIH syndrome is so insidious - - it's self-generated and self-defeating.
When you have NIH syndrome, your corporate and internal cultures are closed to fresh ideas, so you stick with in-house or traditional approaches even if it means you stay in neutral and end up in a frankly absurd position:
You are a public agency that wants to spend $164 million public dollars on a controversial water supply system.
You are applying for up to $100 million in federal aid to build it.
You are entering a public regulatory process never before used that involves public officials in eight sates and two Canadian provinces as they prepare to make a precedent-setting decision about piping water - - a publicly-managed resource - - outside of the Great Lakes basin.
And you are stuck at public regulatory review step #1 - - the DNR's pivotal legal and environmental assessment - - so what do you do"
Cancel a meeting with the very same DNR - - certainly a public agency - - because the public wants to attend and observe.
Doctor, doctor, Waukesha needs a new prescription to fend off an outbreak of NIH.
If you thought that Gov. Elect Scott Walker is just out to get the state's fiscal house in order, think again.
Walker tells The Wall Street Journal:"'If we do what we said we would do in the campaign, there is no doubt it will be harder for Obama" to carry states such as Wisconsin and Ohio in 2012, Mr. Walker said."
So there it is - - it's politics over policy, fellow Wisconsinites: We're just pawns in the GOP/Fox News/Wall Street Journal (Rupert Murdoch actually controls all three) grand ideological and partisan plan.
As Walker said in his 2002 run for County Government, 'cut this out and put it on your refrigerator.'
| Start Time: | 12:01 AM CST Monday, November 22, 2010 |
| End Time: | 11:00 PM CST Monday, November 22, 2010 |
| Counties: | Brown, Calumet, Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Fond Du Lac, Green, Green Lake, Iowa, Jefferson, Kenosha, Kewaunee, Lafayette, Manitowoc, Marquette, Milwaukee, Outagamie, Ozaukee, Portage, Racine, Rock, Sauk, Sheboygan, Walworth, Washington, Waukesha, Waupaca, Waushara, and Winnebago |
| Air Quality Index (AQI) Values | Levels of Health Concern | Colors |
| When the AQI is in this range: | ...air quality conditions are: | ...as symbolized by this color: |
| 0 to 50 | Good | Green |
| 51 to 100 | Moderate | Yellow |
| 101 to 150 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | Orange |
| 151 to 200 | Unhealthy | Red |
| 201 to 300 | Very Unhealthy | Purple |
| 301 to 500 | Hazardous | Maroon |
It's important to note that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources did not agree with the City of Waukesha's reasoning that a meeting about the city's stalled Lake Michigan diversion application be closed to the public.
I had written about the closed meeting demand, and thus the meeting's cancellation, here.
The Daily Reporter did some fine reporting on the matter, and I am reprinting from its story - - a registration is required - - these salient paragraphs:
"The city has submitted its application twice, most recently in September, and failed to gain approval each time. Bruce Baker, administrator of the DNR water division, asked to meet with Waukesha officials to discuss what the state needs before the request can be processed.
Baker said the information sought from Waukesha would not have changed regardless who was in attendance, and the DNR sees no reason to prevent the public from attending.The City of Waukesha is also in a contentious relationship with the neighboring Town of Waukesha over water supplies. Frankly, the City's strategy right now is a total mystery, as the DNR's website devoted to the application continues to rate the application as deficient (see the "EIS process" button - - though the Waukesha Common Council approved it in early April.
“I can’t identify anything that would justify meeting in closed-door session,” Baker said. “I guess that’s something the city views differently, and that’s their prerogative.”
Dan Duchniak, Waukesha water utility general manager, refused to say what items in the public application the city considers legally sensitive. He said the city’s attorney advised it would not be in Waukesha’s best interest to meet with a third-party present.
The city would consider meeting DNR officials, Duchniak said, if some agreement is reached beforehand on what could be said in the public forum.
“There is already a public process in place that allows outside parties to comment,” Duchniak said. “Why should that process be changed for this application?”
The DNR routinely lets public groups attend such meetings, said Ezra Meyer, water resource specialist for Clean Wisconsin. Meyer said he had planned to observe Thursday’s meeting until Ybarra announced Waukesha would not attend."
Remember that some of the money ticketed for high-speed rail and rejected by incoming Gov. Scott Walker was to finance improvements to the existing Hiawatha Amtrak line from Chicago to Milwaukee, and then north and west of Madison on the once-daily Empire Builder route that goes all the way to the Pacific Northwest.
And when not being used for passenger trains, those rails carry freight - - so I could see Walker adopting a business focus to justify trying to keep some of the $800+ million high-speed rail funding while at the same time disassociating himself from high speed rail.
We've seen Walker do this before - - take stimulus funding after attacking the program, or be completely against toll roads but then say a toll lane would be OK - - so a parsed, position-changing Walker two-step would not be a surprise.
It would work like this:
A) proposing to retain some of the $810 million high-speed rail funding for track improvements to the Empire Builder line for freight customers, B) accepting funding to improve the highly-successful seven-times-daily Hiawatha line (it serves the business community and others traveling regularly to Chicago from SE Wisconsin, and the Milwaukee Intermodal station was to get some upgrading, too), and C) creating some rail construction and maintenance jobs, and also supporting assembly jobs at Talgo for the two train sets ordered for the beefed-up Hiawatha runs.
And D) using this strategy to change the conservation enough to wiggle out the firestorm he started when high-speed rail planning and spending was stopped at his behest.
Then he could turn back the balance of the funding for deficit reduction, or have his Republican allies in Congress try and reprogram those dollars to the Zoo Intersection ($2+ billion, now unfunded) or other Wisconsin road projects.
That reprogramming is unlikely, but Walker could tell the road-builders and Waukesha County commuters he tried.
That 'solution,' of course, cuts Wisconsin out of the high-speed rail system envisioned for the Midwest, and leaves Madisonians who want to ride the Empire Builder to Milwaukee, Mitchell Field or Chicago to first drive26 miles to Columbus, WI, (no shuttle bus).
Don't be surprised if this is the deal Walker supports, or has others float for him.
Call or email the transition office:
800-261-9200, or transition@wisconsin.gov
I remember from my days in Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist's office during his efforts to get the state to reduce the scale and cost of the Marquette Interchange that value analyses are routinely done in-house or by state consultants to compute the costs and benefits of major projects.
With the feds paying the entire $810 million Wisconsin rail line construction cost, the state was to be left with an annual operating charge of $7.5 million - - but reduced by 90% to $750,000, the feds also have said.
The train was to produce more than 4,700 construction jobs through 2013 and create at least 55 full-time operator and other jobs just in this Wisconsin piece of a Midwestern network, - - so my question is, did the state figure out what the projected state income tax payments would be on worker and contractor salaries, for example, and also the projected sales taxes on materials purchased for the line's construction?
More than $750,000? No doubt.
In other words - - wouldn't the state have recovered more than enough money to meet the annual $750,000 operating cost of the train - - and by a factor large enough to pay that bill for many years?
So even without looking into the additional benefits - - development near stations, secondary employment, tourism and business travel - - isn't the state actually losing money along with losing the train line?
Second related issue:
Let's say that the amount owed to feds for work done and contracts terminated is less than the earlier estimate of $100-$135 million.
Let's take a really generously reduced estimate - - that somehow the state only has to repay to the feds about $35 million - - somewhere between roughly a third and a quarter of the existing estimate.
That equals to almost 50 years of of the state share of the operating expense, at $750,000 annually, give or take a few bucks/
And without taking into account the value of the lost service to consumers, the cleaner air, the jobs and paychecks, plus the state sales and income tax collections - - you tell me - - where's the benefit to killing the train?
All the costs seem to be penalties to the state and the workforce.
By any measure I can imagine, the train is a bargain.
Where is the purported business acumen of train-killer Scott Walker and his incoming Republican allies?
The dean of the Capitol press corps gets it right.
My two cents worth - - repeated on this blog often (one example, here) - - is that Walker's decision has nothing to do with money, because the relative pittance the train would have cost the state would have come back many times in jobs, payroll taxes, reputation and development associated with the train's construction and synergies.
Walker made a decision based on the screwy righty perspectives of the talk radio hosts who created him as County Executive in 2002 and carried him to his 52% majority in the governor's race.
Electoral politics is a bad place to live ideologically.
I am pleased to see that these issues will be raised in a state court.
6th District US Rep. Tom Petri was among three congressional Republicans offering Scott Walker cover the other day with a proposed bill to allow Walker to return rejected federal high-speed rail money for deficit reduction.
The implication: Petri is one of those deficit-and-spending-hawks.
But log on to Petri's home page and you find that he just loved the current federal transportation bill because:
Republicans in the Congress will ban earmarks.
Scott Walker and other Republicans will hail each other's political courage and fiscal responsibility.
Then they will vigorously pursue earmarks for the following, cash-poor projects and plans - - without contradiction - - because Scott Walker has been a supporter of multiple major projects requiring billions in new federal and state dollars - - and the Republicans will simply call the earmarks necessary to keep these projects alive something other than earmarks, like infrastructure investments, or infrastructure revenue enhancements or state-federal partnership revenue investment infrastructure enhancements, or something:
* Completing the I-94 N/S reconstruction and widening between Milwaukee and Illinois. There's more than a billion dollars left there, I reckon. Scott Walker is in favor of the expansion.
* Beginning the reconstruction and widening of the Zoo Interchange. That's $2+ billion needed, right there. Scott Walker has long been a supporter of the entire $6.5 billion SE freeway expansion and reconstruction plan; more work is on the longer-term horizon into Ozaukee, Waukesha, Milwaukee and Walworth Counties.
This is from the official record of the final SEWRPC Southeast Freeway Advisory Committee meeting on April 3, 2003 (a meeting I attended) which led to a state commitment to spend $6.5 billion to reconstruct and widen the freeway system:
"Chairman Drew asked if there were any additional comments or questions on the amendment put forth by Mr. Walker, seconded by Mr. White, to include the provision of additional capacity on 127 miles of the regional freeway system. Mr. Dwyer suggested a roll call vote. Mr. Walker’s motion to amend the final plan to include the provision of additional capacity on 127 miles of the regional freeway system, seconded by Mr. White, passed on a vote of 14 ayes to 9 nays, with Messrs. Buestrin, Cook, Drew, Dwyer, Finley, Melvin, Miller, Norem, Sheehy, Speaker, Walker, White, Wirth, and Ms. Jacobson voting in favor of the amendment. Messrs. Fafard, Holloway, Kehl, Leonard, Millonzi, Norquist, Pratt and Ms. Estness and Ms. McCutcheon voted against the amendment. Mr. Matzke abstained from the vote."* Beginning the planning for and reconstruction/widening of I-39/90 between the Wisconsin Dells and Illinois. Another billion, without a budget - - but already endorsed by Walker.
The Dems have public opinion on their side - - if they will only act on it.
I pass along this piece by BizTimes' Steve Jagler - - as something of a primer on that old, ultra-conservative Milwaukee corporate culture that is often its own, worst enemy.
