WEDC Continues Their Incompetence

By Jeff Simpson

For some reason, maybe its ego, the Walker Administration loves to blow our tax money on television ads.  We saw the incredible waste of money that the WI Department of Tourism had with their desire to pump up right wing Hollywood types and play out 30 year old fantasies.  

Now , what might be Governor Walker's biggest failure, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has decided to also jump in the - let's waste more taxpayer money on TV ads game.

 The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. will use close to 10 percent of its $5.75 million annual marketing budget — itself more than triple last year’s $1.5 million budget — for the two ads, which feature brief testimonials from business executives touting the state’s “pro-business climate” and “strong workforce.”

Ignoring the fact that these are just Walker campaign commercials that we the taxpayers are funding(Walker is an expert at using our $$ to get elected), these commercials on their face value are utterly ridiculous. 

Does anyone with an economic clue in their head really think that watching a 30 second silly commercial is all it will take for a company to relocate into Wisconsin?   Of course not, but that is why WEDC has been such a failure.   Had Reed Hall been smart enough to just spend ten seconds on Google, and realized what a waste of taxpayer dollars this is.

 Businesses commonly cite five main reasons for moving, according to Sharon K. Ward, an economic development consultant in Allentown, Pennsylvania. These are labor and work force issues, the desire to reach new markets, the need to upgrade facilities or equipment, the desire to lower costs or increase cash flow, and considerations about quality of life. For different businesses and at different times, certain concerns are more important than others, Ward notes. But just about all moves can be attributed to some combination of these issues.

Because they watched a television commercial did not make the top five.  Who knew?

However tragically sad this whole story is, the Walker administration is always good for a laugh.   WEDC deputy director Ryan Murray does not disappoint.

The ads don't mention Minnesota, Illinois or any other state. Kelly Lietz, WEDC's vice president of marketing, said agency officials aren't looking for a border war or to insult anyone. Still, WEDC Deputy Secretary Ryan Murray acknowledged Wisconsin is competing with neighboring states.
"I'm sure my counterpart in Illinois won't be happy to see these ads running in his state," Murray said. "But it's a competitive environment."

 Apparently Ryan Murray said that with a straight face.  See Ryan Murray is Deputy Secretary of WEDC and has a combined amount of real life business experience of - take it away Dean Wormer:

 See Ryan Murray's resume is loaded with stints working the Randy Hopper, Terrance Wall and Scott Walker campaigns. As Marc Eisen in the Isthmus wrote ;

That would be Ryan Murray, 30, who in July was named by Gov. Scott Walker to be the chief operating officer of the quasi-public Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the state's principal jobs promoter. (Paul Jadin is its CEO.) Murray's resume (PDF) shows him to be conspicuously devoid of any private-sector experience, but well schooled in the political arts.

Murray studied political science at UW-Superior and Macalester College (no degree is noted), and then blazed like a meteorite from the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign through multiple Republican legislative offices to a series of senior positions for Walker, culminating as director of policy and legislative affairs.

Ryan Murray defines crony capitalism and the failure of WEDC to be anything more than a very costly arm of the Friends of Scott Walker campaign.

That is the problem that Ryan Murray does not understand.    His counterparts in Illinois and Minnesota are working on campaigns where they belong, not handing out I-tunes gift cards to their friends.  

Of No Good Account(ing)

This is a little dated, but Walker's Economy-Destroying Cronies (WEDC) has made the news again, and not in a good way.

An audit shows that the problems with WEDC are many, and each and every one of them is a trademark for Scott Walker's style of "leadership:"

Sloppy accounting practices, poor monitoring of loans and an exodus of employees spelled trouble for the state's beleaguered jobs agency, an independent audit released Monday found.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., a quasi-public organization created by Gov. Scott Walker in July 2011, was meant to be the flagship agency leading his effort to help create 250,000 jobs during his first term. But Wisconsin's job growth has been stunted, and WEDC has been plagued by serious problems, including its failure to track millions in overdue loans and a high turnover of top officials.

The article goes on to say that $19 million of the $51 million in loans this group has made will probably never be recovered.

Four million dollars of the missing taxpayer money won't be recovered due to the businesses having gone out of business. I hope that Walker, Americans for Preposterous and the MacIver Institute for the Criminally Insane tell us again about how "it's working." I keep seeming to forget.

Now, if one could find a Walker apologist that will even admit there is a problem with WEDC, they would say that it's not Walker's fault and that the should be credited with trying something new and bold to help the state.

Of course, like Walker, they would be lying through their teeth.

This sort of private-public partnership (PPP) has been around for decades and has failed each and every time that it was tried:

“Turning economic development over to PPPs is fool’s gold,” says Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy. “What really matters is business basics: strategic public investments in skills, infrastructure and innovation — not privatized smokestack chasing.”

The reported noted that PPPs have been around for more than 20 years but were dropped in several states because they were so problematic. And it cited major issues in states that were still using them.

Those problems included misuse of taxpayer funds (Rhode Island, Florida and Wyoming); excessive executive bonuses (Virginia, Florida, Michigan and Wyoming); conflicts of interest in subsidy awards (Florida, Utah and Texas); questionable claims by the PPP about its effectiveness (Wyoming, Florida, Utah and Indiana); and resistance to accountability (Florida and Michigan).

But the money quote comes earlier in that article:

At this point, nobody is accusing WEDC of any intentional wrongdoing.

Rather, it appears the agency designed by Gov. Scott Walker to replace the old Commerce Department was simply over its head, short-staffed and filled with political appointees with no experience in handling large amounts of public money.

See what I mean about WEDC being so symbolic of Walker's leadership style.

I could write a book listing all of the examples that Walker has put unqualified cronies in positions of power, short-staffed an agency and/or had the earmarks of possible corruption.

Someday, I just may do that.

Walker's Christmas Follies Begins Early

Last year, Scott Walker thumbed his nose at Wisconsin and at Christmas at the same time when he put a model Wisconsin and Southern Railroad to run around the Christmas tree in the Capitol Building. This was an egregious affront due to the fact that the then owner of Wisconsin and Southern, William E. Gardner, was convicted of illegally donating company funding to Walker's campaign.

Image courtesy of
scottwalkerwatch.com

This year, Walker is wasting no time releasing his inner Scrooge and showing what a buffoon he is.

His grand plan for this year's tree? Get the kiddies to make ornaments which will help the latest marketing scheme for his corporate-run corporate welfare machine, WEDC. You know, the one that can't keep track of millions of dollars it was handing out to fellow corporations.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's regurgitation of a Walker press release:

Gov. Scott Walker says the theme of this year's tree will be "In Wisconsin," which is also the motto being used in a marketing campaign by the state's chief economic development agency.

Walker asks that the ornaments be brightly colored and represent goods or products that are made within Wisconsin such as milk, cheese and other dairy products, cranberries, and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Teachers or students interested in displaying ornaments are asked to submit them by Nov. 19. They should be sent to the governor's Capitol office.

Well, this presents some interesting problems for Walker.

First, Walker has made a big stink that it is a Christmas tree, not just a holiday tree. But he forgets the "reason for the season", as they like to say, to make it a crass commercial enterprise for the private market, in a public setting yet. Talk about your crony capitalism.

I can't wait to hear Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the other squawkers call out Walker on his war on Christmas.

Then there's the bit about teachers and students who might want to submit ornaments.

Apparently he forgot that he slashed education funding by a billion dollars. There are now fewer art teachers and much less in the way or art supplies available due to his giving all that money to his campaign donors.

If I were an art teacher, I'd be hard pressed to want to squander the little time or supplies left to me to use them on one of Walker's hare-brained schemes to promote his corporate welfare program.

Maybe he's just trying to get the children used to the idea of working for nothing to benefit Big Business, or getting them used to the idea of what the lack of child labor laws is like.

And finally, can he explain all the taxpayer dollars that went into promoting his corporate welfare program that only came up with the idea of exploiting kids to do so? Where is all that money?

Apparently, like most everything else, Walker doesn't do holidays well either.