Those of you on Kos may not have heard too much about the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), or even know too much about the level of disaster that Scott Walker's reign as governor of Wisconsin has been. But you should, as new evidence surfaced yesterday that illustrates just how corrupt and careless this guy's way of doing business is, and how that'll catch up to him once he formally enters the presidential race.
WEDC was one of the first items that Walker passed when he took office in 2011, and it replaced the state's Department of Commerce (and its civil servants) as the agency that was involved in economic development and tax incentives for businesses looking to expand or relocate to the state. The creation of WEDC was to create a "public-private" partnership" and create "flexibilities" in offering those incentives to companies, as part of Walker's plans to make Wisconsin "Open for Business."
If this sounds like an opening for corruption and mismanagement, you would be correct. WEDC immediately landed into trouble for having a revolving door of leadership and mismanagement of government funds, so much so that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2012 said it could not be allowed to handle its grants, so the oversight had to be shifted to another state agency. Then came an audit from the Legislative Audit Bureau in May 2013, and The Progressive's Ruth Conniff gives a nice summary of some of that reports many findings.
The WEDC was slapped by the feds last fall for losing track of millions of taxpayer dollars and failing to track its own loans to businesses, which likewise conveniently forgot to keep up their payments.That's a trend that continues to this day, as WEDC staff has continued to accompany Walker on his many recent "trade trips" overseas (including the one he's making to Israel next week),often at taxpayer expense.Now we learn that the job creators at the WEDC handed out money to companies that didn't create jobs. On four occasions, the agency gave out "incentives" to companies for the jobs they had created long before they got the awards.
You can't say the WEDC staff didn't have fun, though. The Audit Bureau reports that they used taxpayer dollars to buy Badgers tickets and iTunes gift cards and to pay for foreign trips for staff and their family members.
It's also interesting to note that many of these WEDC "job creator" grants have gone to Scott Walker campaign contributors. As One Wisconsin Now showed in their excellent "W is for WEDC" report from May 2014.
Governor Walker’s campaign has received the benefit of over $2 million from WEDC recipients in either direct campaign donations or donations to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), which has spent heavily in support of his campaign. RGA spent $13 million for Gov. Walker in 2010 and 2012, and has already spent or committed $4 million in 2014. Overall, Walker received $1,023,546 from 192 WEDC recipients, and WEDC recipients donated an additional $1,088,256 to the Republican Governors Association.At WEDC, these same Walker donors account for 30 percent of the recipients of economic development incentives, and they have received nearly 60 percent of the funding. Nearly one-third of WEDC’s total investment portfolio (190 recipients) were donors to Scott Walker’s campaign, either individually via employee(s) or as part of a management or ownership structure. Over one hundred of these recipients gave $1,000 or more to the Walker campaign.
In total, WEDC has awarded $974,659,130 through the end of 2013. Companies that donated to Governor Walker and/or RGA received a shocking $570,021,034 of that funding.
Lastly, it was revealed last year that at least 2 companies that received WEDC tax credits not only were Walker contributors, but outsourced hundreds Wisconsin jobs to other countries after receiving WEDC's tax credits. WEDC Board CEO Scott Walker claimed that this type of outsourcing would never happen again in September 2014 (ahead of the November elections), and that new policies would be put into place. But the emptiness of Walker's promise was proven last week when Eaton Corporation (one of the two companies named in the 2014 story) announced a second round of outsourcing, sending 93 Wisconsin jobs to Mexico despite receiving $370,000 in tax credits to expand in Wisconsin.