Examining Governor Scott Walker's Highway Boondoggles

[highplainsdem]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phineas-baxandall/in-the-public-interest-ex_b_867379.html

This Huffington Post article is from a senior tax and budget analyst with U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups:

Two investigations released yesterday show the new governor has wasted excess tax dollars on high-priced consultants to replace cheaper engineers that were lost to budget cuts and has proposed to spend billions on highway boondoggles that make no sense for Wisconsin.

A local news station revealed that in the first four months of this year, Wisconsin's Department of Transportation paid an additional $13.8 million to high-priced consultants beyond the costs of completing the work through the department's engineers. Internal department cost comparisons consistently show that the outsourcing is more expensive than using in-house state engineers, but none are available because of budget cuts by Walker.

Expensive and unnecessary new road projects are the subject of the second set of revelations today. The Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group (WISPIRG) released a report examining four new proposed road expansion projects that would cost between $1.2 billion and $2.1 billion for the state. The analysis was conducted with the assistance of a former Assistant Commissioner for Planning and Development at the New Jersey Department of Transportation. It found projects that appear unjustified, insufficiently reviewed and supported by outdated data. For example:

· The official data used to justify a proposed widening of I-90 project is both nearly 10 years old and does not support the necessity of the project. Additionally, the proposal has inexplicably chosen the most expensive option for construction in every case on this project. Predictions for the cost of this project range from $715 million to $1.5 billion.

-snip-

What this article doesn't mention is that these expensive and unnecessary new road projects are apparently Walker's way of paying back the road builders who donated to his campaign:

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/108064274.html

http://www.fox11online.com/dpp/news/wisconsin/report-road-builders-donated-more-than-188000-dollars-to-scott-walker-governor-campaign

[pansypoo53219]

1. tommy fucking thomson was the exact same.

never saw so much NEW 4 or 6 lane highways added or so many unneeded bypasses and over built ones. fuck city streets tho.

[Scuba]

2. That man just loved concrete. n/t

[underpants]

3. George Allen sapped VDOT during his reign as governor

Firings at VDOT in the early 90's were such a common occurrence that workers would work to lunch on Fridays then box up their personal items and wait for a phone call or email (this was early in the email era). If they didn't get the call they unpacked and set up for Monday. I had heard about this but had it confirmed by several people when I used to ride the bus with several VDOT staff.

THEN Allen had his stupidity thrown back in his stupid face when he had to re-hire them. BTW- firing them allowed him to claim he had cut government employment. As any employer will tell you the actual cost of employment is 150% of salary. These re-hires were contractors paid well over 150% of their former salaries but they lost their retirement benefits - they were paid to compensate for this.

My brother, who say 200+ Dead shows up and down the east coast, used to say that hitting the Virginia state line meant smoooooth sailing on nice roads (as compared especially to Maryland). The break in road maintenance in Va has lead to a noticeable decrease in road quality - something that was impossible to make up.

Allen also spent TONS of money removing Minesweeper and Freecell from computers :eyes:

[mysuzuki2]

4. I don't understand why, with gas prices as high as they are and going higher,r

why we should spend so much on highways and starve public transportation. Seems we should be going the other way.