Wisconsin's Fiscal Conservatives

Thank Goodness we have elected a group of fiscal conservatives to office in Wisconsin. Led by Governor Scott Walker have brought a new day of fiscal responsibility to our great state!  Of course if this is your view of Wisconsin at this time - STOP READING RIGHT NOW! 

For the rest of us, let's take a look at some of the Republican's fiscal "successes":

1. Republican State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen decided to stop using taxpayer money to try and suppress democratic votes.  Unfortunately for the taxpayers JB's decision came too late:

 State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen reversed course Monday by dropping an appeal of a decision on legislative boundaries and agreeing to pay the plaintiffs more than $185,000 in taxpayer money.


Just over two months ago, the Republican attorney general insisted the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was essential and said he would be personally involved in overseeing it. But on Monday, he gave up on trying to have the nation's highest court overturn a decision that set different boundaries for two Assembly districts than what legislators who initially drew the lines wanted.

Under the deal filed in court Monday, the state will drop its appeal and pay $185,500 to immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, which sued the state over the maps. The group prevailed in March before a panel of three federal judges in its arguments that newly drawn boundaries for Assembly Districts 8 and 9 on Milwaukee's south side violated the federal Voting Rights Act.

 2. From the same article, we are starting to get a preliminary number at how much the secret redistricting will cost the taxpayers of Wisconsin.  

The payment will bring taxpayer costs for the maps to over $1.5 million, and that number could yet climb.

"I guess the taxpayers should be holding onto their wallet," said Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha).

For those in need of a refresher course on this topic( there are soooo many), the republicans all signed secrecy agreements with Michael, Best & Friedrich(yes your elected officials signed agreements vowing to never tell anyone what they were doing or how they did it- a new era of "transparency") while redrawing assembly districts in Wisconsin(a process that has to be done by the legislature every ten years).  They denied access to ALL democrats in this whole process(and by default any citizen of Wisconsin who the elected democrats represent).  It was even to the point, where they had to draw up talking points so the less intelligent members like Robin Vos would know what to say in public.  Their little attempt at gerrymandering  our state has cost the Wisconsin taxpayer over $1.5 million dollars and counting!

3.  Comes to us from Walkersha County and everyone's favorite hard core republican - Kathy Nickolaus!

A consultant's report traces problems in reporting Waukesha County election results directly to mistakes by outgoing County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus - mistakes that will cost county taxpayers more than a quarter of a million dollars to fix.

Nickolaus had promised to post timely results online and update them periodically for the April 3 election. But the public didn't learn the results of contested local races for hours, while reporters and election reporting service representatives were forced to tabulate the vote totals themselves from long paper tapes hanging on the walls of a meeting room.

The embattled county clerk was already under scrutiny because of her role in the 2011 state Supreme Court race, when she left the entire city of Brookfield out of countywide vote totals. When those 14,000 votes were added in, two days after the election, Justice David Prosser had won by 7,000 votes, instead of narrowly losing to Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, as the original count showed. But the uncertainty over the Waukesha County vote led to a statewide recount that confirmed Prosser's victory.
Nickolaus, a Republican, agreed to withdraw from directly overseeing this year's gubernatorial recall election after County Executive Dan Vrakas, a former GOP legislator, threatened to call for her resignation if she didn't hand off her election duties. She also announced she would not seek re-election in November.
After the April election, Vrakas told the county Department of Administration to hire a consultant "to get to the bottom of what the problems were," said Norm Cummings, director of administration.

The full report from SysLogic Inc., a Brookfield consulting firm, was not immediately available Monday, but some of its findings are briefly summarized in a funding measure being considered by the County Board.

SysLogic linked the April problems to an upgrade that Nickolaus ordered in the county's election software before the balloting. The firm found that Nickolaus was the only person trained to program the upgraded software, but she "did not follow the proper protocol, resulting in the failure of the functionality to compile election results," the fund transfer ordinance says.

At the time, Nickolaus had said that when her staff tried to upload results from voting machine memory packs into the reporting program, it wouldn't work.

"We were shocked," she said, because she and her staff had tested the reporting program "many times."
Both in the April election and in the 2011 high court race, the problems were compounded by the lack of backup for Nickolaus and her system, the firm found. That echoes long-standing complaints from Cummings about the way Nickolaus has managed her computer systems.

"She didn't allow anyone to help," Cummings said. "With every election, there's a huge risk that something will go wrong."

Nickolaus and Vrakas did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

After Nickolaus stepped aside, Command Central LLC, the Minnesota election software vendor, wasn't able to arrange training for other county staffers until late August, Cummings said. That led the county to hire Command Central to program the software itself for the May 8 recall primary, the June 5 recall general election and the upcoming Aug. 14 primary, at a cost of $237,300, he said.

Later in August, Command Central will train Deputy County Clerk Kelly Yaeger and a county information technology staffer in programming the software, for $4,000, the funding measure says. Without that training, the county would have to spend another $67,600 for Command Central to handle the programming for the Nov. 6 general election, the measure says.

"We can't take the chance with only one person knowing it (the programming)," Cummings said.
Cummings stressed that the consultant report found only errors and poor procedures, with no evidence of fraud. The problems are confined to how vote totals are compiled by the county clerk's office, and have nothing to do with how voting is administered by municipal clerks' offices, he said.

The SysLogic report cost $15,000, for a total of $256,300 to investigate and fix the election reporting problems, the funding measure says. That money will come from the county's contingency fund, if the County Board agrees.

Good job Waukesha, keep voting for anyone with an R after their name!   By the way, I could have saved you the $15,000 consultants fee andjust charged you a tank of gas and a good meal.  I could have diagnosed the problem immediately, republican incompetence.   Here is some free advice for November:    Staff from really bad politicians MAKE really bad politicians!  Afterall, Nickolaus spent 13 years working for David Prosser and had to get immunity from the original caucus scandal to keep from going to prison!

 4.  They passed Act 10 strictly because they were told to, and as a way to punish people who voted democratic, because they tried to pass it it through so quickly, they had no idea what was in the bill!  

Wisconsin's controversial 2011 collective bargaining law may add $87.5 million to state retirement system costs next year due to a little-noticed change that will boost employee benefits.

The unanticipated costs aren't a back-breaking amount for the massive retirement fund, but they illustrate why laws that alter the complex retirement system should be examined carefully before enactment, said Robert Conlin, secretary of the Department of Employee Trust Funds.

For those of you still scoring at home, the total cost that the fiscal conservatives have needlessly spent  $89,256,300.  In other words voting democratic will save the state at least $90 Million dollars!   

This is just the tip of the iceberg!