Friday, May 3, 2013

Governor Should Step Down as Chair of WEDC Board - WEDC performance suggests a lack of leadership and oversight

From Senator Dave Hansen:
"Governor Should Step Down as Chair of WEDC Board

WEDC performance suggests a lack of leadership and oversight

(Madison)—Responding to a Legislative Audit which showed massive problems at every level of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, state Senator Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) suggested that Governor Walker should step down as chairman of the WEDC Board.

“Given the problems that WEDC is facing and the Governor’s continuing out-of-state travels, he should strongly consider stepping aside as Board Chair and letting someone with more experience and knowledge of economic development take the reins,” said Hansen. The audit showed that WEDC had failed in nearly every aspect of its operations including:

  • Failing to provide adequate rules for staff use of credit cards and acceptance of gifts from those attempting to receive financial assistance including the purchase of 6 season tickets to Badger Football and a number of ITunes gift cards.
  • Failing to comply with statutes that require the governing board to verify the performance information reported by recipients of grants and loans.
  • Failing to obtain the required financial statements from 12 of 14 businesses that received grants or loans of $100,000 or more.
  • Failing to enact policies to track and address problems with delinquent loans.
  • Failing to follow legal requirements when making awards, including making awards to ineligible recipients and inappropriately allocating job creation and training tax credits of more than $900,000 for jobs that already existed.”

“Ultimately the Governor is responsible for the failures at WEDC and the fact that we have fallen to 44th in the nation for job creation under his watch. The governor either needs to put his presidential aspirations aside and deal with the problems at WEDC or he should step down as WEDC’s chair. If that requires a change in the law then the Legislature should step in and make the necessary change.”

3 comments:

  1. Remember a few months back, when Walker failed to inform the board about the missing WEDC loans, and when asked about it, Scotty basically said "That was on a need-to-know basis, and they didn't need to know."

    And then he "attended" the next WEDC Board meeting by telephone. "Unintimidated?"

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  2. It will be easier to indict Walker on corruption charges if he remains Chairman.

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  3. In Republican think every failure is actually a success. In other words WEDC is working just like it was intended to. The only problems are that media and bloggers keep reporting the facts, and the Democratic members of the legislature keep speaking out against Herr WalKKKer.

    Just a few more laws and all will be REICHtified.

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