As Scott Walker Mulls White House Bid, A Spotlight On His Jobs Agency
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a potential Republican presidential candidate, traveled on a trade mission to Britain last week, he brought along top officials from his economic development agency to help drum up jobs. It's a task they have struggled to accomplish at home.
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, a public-private body set up by Walker shortly after he took office in January 2011, was supposed to help the state climb out of recession by shedding bureaucratic rules and drawing on private-sector expertise.
But the WEDC has fallen short of its own goals by tens of thousands of jobs and failed to keep track of millions of dollars it has handed out. One reason for the agency's disappointing performance: Walker's overhaul of the state bureaucracy drove away seasoned development workers, economic development experts who work closely with the agency told Reuters.
Critics say the WEDC's struggles highlight a significant gap in Walker's resume as he lays the groundwork for a likely Republican presidential bid in the 2016 election: his middling record on job creation.
"Essentially we've been surfing on the national recovery," said Marc Levine, a senior fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Center for Economic Development. "The idea was that Wisconsin policies are better than the national policies and we were going to move ahead of the national rate. That clearly hasn't happened."
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