Walker's Cronyism Costing County

by capper

Several weeks ago, I questioned Walker's move to place a crony from his campaign to a public liaison position in his administration. It was the third time that Walker's hired this guy, Tim Russell, to his administration, between his campaigns for governor county executive, governor, and governor county executive again.

A frequent commenter, Andy, argued that perhaps, Mr. Russell was suited for his position, as well as the other two jobs he filled in Walker's administration.

Today's edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel belies Andy's position in defending Walker's cronyism. In a story on how Walker is basically trying to dismantle a whole section of county government, probably so he can continue to do his behind the scene, no bid contracting and sell-offs, we find that Mr. Russell and another Walker crony, Bob Dennik, weren't so qualified after all (emphasis mine):

Walker’s last two choices to lead the county economic development office, Bob Dennik and Tim Russell, came from his campaign and lacked depth in the development business, Clark said. Dennik left the post this week to become an executive with a Pewaukee construction company. Russell is now Walker’s community relations director.

“Walker chooses folks who don’t have (the necessary) experience,” she said. Dennik came under repeated fire from the board the last two years over disappointing land sales results that put the county budget in a jam. He didn’t return several phone calls seeking comment.

Only about $226,000 of the $7.2 million in budgeted land sales revenue for this year has materialized, contributing to a projected multimillion-dollar, year-end deficit. The land-sales budgets have been off $1 million or more in four of the last seven years, county figures show.

Between this and the fact that he is ticking off a lot of elderly folks, and he is giving his people a lot of big raises while trying to shove a decrepit hospital on the tax payers of the county, I don't really see how Walker thinks this is going to help his perpetual run for governor.

More on this is coming up, but will probably be on (shameless plug time) my other home, Cognitive Dissidence.