Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Walker's First Campaign Talking Points

Now that Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is finally gearing up to tell us something that we already knew more bad news comes from the courthouse.

The reader already knows that Walker used the poor as pawns, refusing to fill the authorized, funded positions in the public assistance call center, as he established his one plank campaign platform. We also already know that due to his willful neglect and his showboating when he challenged the State to take over the program has led the State to in fact taking over the program.

This morning, we are starting to get a clearer picture of the cost of Walker's arrogance, hypocrisy and incompetence: $14 million.

Most of that $14 million comes directly from Walker's inability and/or refusal to do his job as County Executive, just so he can waste his time, and our tax money, on his futile run for governor:

Kreklow told the panel that the state takeover would cost the county up to $6 million in 2010, including loss of money the county gets for computer services linked to the assistance programs. The county also will lose about $1 million by vacating about two-thirds of the office space in the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center at 1242 W. Vliet St., where many of the assistance programs are now housed, Kreklow's report says. The county gets partly reimbursed for the space by the federal government.

A portion of a second county building housing public assistance offices also is expected to be vacated.

The county also will have a small loss of revenue this year linked to the state takeover of public assistance programs, Kreklow said. The state announced the takeover in February, saying chronic mistakes by the county had caused many poor families to be unfairly denied or delayed food, medical and child care benefits.

Walker sent his lackey to the County Board yesterday to give them the bad news and state that he wants to cut the county budget by 6%.

Walker's idea to make up for his incompetence is to cut services and county employees. I would sure like him to offer more details on that one. But given that the county and its unions are in contract talks, it appears that this is more likely campaign bluster than anything else. Otherwise, he just sold the tax payers up the river, again.

Another thing that makes me wonder how serious Walker is about the budget deficit is that he is still touting his tax payer-funded campaign bike ride. One would think that someone that is supposed to be on the tax payers side, as Walker claims to be, would have canceled that already. But we already know that Walker is one of the biggest hypocrites around.

You got to give the guy credit though. Just one day after he announces that he will announce, he has some talking points already. I can just hear him now:

"Hi, I'm Scott Walker. I'm incompetent and a hypocrite. Vote for me, and I will do to you what I've done to Milwaukee."

Call your county board supervisor today, and tell them you're tired of sponsoring Walker's campaign with your tax dollars.

2 comments:

  1. Walker has a budget surplus of I believe $300 million. Doyle has $ 5.7 billion Dollar defict. And Walker is the incompetent??? Please don't insult the intelligence of taxpayers.

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  2. Anonymous either is Walker's campaign manager or relies solely on Charlie Sykes for his information.

    Walker is claiming that the county may have a $3 million, not $300 million dollar surplus.

    However, the numbers aren't final, there are some funny numbers that do not make sense and are probably wrong. But even if Walker was correct, let us not forget the two main sources where that money came from: 1) The county board overriding 19 of his 22 vetoes, and 2) an amazing inheritance.

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