How Walker Cost Taxpayers $2.6 Billion

Governor Scott Walker. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Scott Walker is a failed conservative and incompetent fiscal steward. Let’s count the ways and add up the losses.

Here are the 7 biggest financial fails by our fake fiscally-conservative Governor:

* $11 million in forfeited Federal Medicaid fraud award eligibility.

* $20.6 million and counting for legal settlements and payments traced to the youth prison crisis he ignored for years at Lincoln Hills.

*  $23 million in forfeited Federal broadband expansion funding.

*  $50 million in settlement awards and equipment losses over the Amtrak train set assembly facility contract broken by Wisconsin under Walker.

*  $750 million to build an extra 19 miles of Milwaukee freeway lanes which planners had recommended against, but which Walker championed.

*  $810 million in Federal Amtrak Milwaukee-to-Madison rail construction funds Walker forfeited.

*  $1+ billion in Federal Medicaid expansion funding Walker has refused to accept through the end of the 2017-’19 state budget.

These forfeited programs or awards would have added jobs, taxable property, public revenues and spin-off development.

Who knew we had the luxury to reject all that?

James Rowen, a former journalist and mayoral staffer in Milwaukee and Madison, writes a regular blog, The Political Environment.