http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phineas-baxandall/in-the-public-interest-ex_b_867379.htmlThis 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 It found projects that appear unjustified, insufficiently reviewed and supported by outdated data.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.htmlhttp://www.fox11online.com/dpp/news/wisconsin/report-road-builders-donated-more-than-188000-dollars-to-scott-walker-governor-campaign