Can We Keep Affording Walker's Tax Saving Methods?

The State has announced today that they have rejected Milwaukee County's bid to house the income maintenance programs that they had to take over:

The decision could cost the county up to $1.2 million next year, unless the county is able to rent the space to outside vendors, Lisa Jo Marks, interim director of the county's Department of Health and Human Services, said Wednesday.

The county had hoped the state would select the county's Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center, 1220 W. Vliet St., for home to hundreds of income maintenance workers. Instead, the state selected a bid from C.D. Smith Construction, Inc. for remodeled space at 2151 N. King Drive, according to a state announcement.

This is more bad news for the County. But I can't help but notice that now that Walker has officially announced himself as a gubernatorial candidate, that the cost of this happening is a heckuva lot less than what it was four months ago. At that time, as I pointed out, the cost was estimated by Walker's own people to be about $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%.

So, was he lying then or is he lying now? If he was lying then, it was as I had surmised and nothing more than another ploy to try to hold over the head of the unions, like he did with the alleged budget deficit of $15 million that he claimed the county was facing this year. If he is lying now, then it is probably because he wants to minimize how badly he has screwed things up, so as not to hurt his campaign too much.

It should be pointed out to the gentle reader that this whole situation was caused by a class action lawsuit filed against the state and the county, claiming that people were being habitually wrongfully denied the services and benefits they were supposed to be getting.

The reason that the poor and needy were unable to get the benefits they deserved was due to Walker's willful sabotaging of the program, especially the call center, where he would have only five to ten people working instead of the thirty that had been authorized and funded.

These were only part of the 717 fully funded positions Walker failed to fill, but the money that was supposed to go to providing these services has never been accounted for.

And what does Scott Walker say about the bad news that was dumped on us today? Well, according to his tweet:

Off 2 Sheboygan Co 2night for an event.

What a show of support for Milwaukee County!

And then there is the several hundreds of millions of dollars of neglected infrastructure that will have to be addressed someday. As well as the pension mess that he had not only failed to fix, like he promised, but actually made worse by continuously short-changing it and then pushing for a questionable and highly risky pension obligation bond scheme, that is now not even expected to succeed.

With all the bills that are piling up due to Walker's "money saving" actions, I don't think we can afford anymore of his nonsense. And if the State's financial woes are as bad as the conservatives would have us believe, there is no way that we could possibly afford him as governor.