Whoda thunk'd it? Scott Walker is pretty much ANOTHER GOP crook!

Scott Walker Padded Salary Increases for Cronies During Budgetary Distress: 24% Salary Increase for Aide with 2 Public Pensions

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Sat, 02/19/2011 - 3:34pm. Guest Commentary

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT FOR TRUTHOUT


Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin who is spearheading the GOP effort to crush collective bargaining, lavished relatively large salary increases on his staff when he was chief executive of the Milwaukee County Board. Walker surreptitiously did this in 2008 - without the approval of the county board itself and at a time that the county was facing a fiscal deficit, and Walker was about to lay off a large number of union workers. In addition, 700 county positions had already been left vacant due to budgetary pressures.

According to a 2008 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (MJS) article,which exposed Walker's illicit personal staff raises, one aide was to achieve a 26% increase - solely initiated and approved by Walker - even though the staffer, Tom Nardelli, was to receive tax-payer funded pensions that would exceed $35,700 a year. A member of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors called Nardelli's salary increase "obscene," according the MJS.

As with the current "budget crisis" in the State of Wisconsin, Walker was helping to create a budget deficit, while using the situation he is responsible for to try and break the unions.

According to a February 18 New York Times editorial, "Just last month, he and the Legislature gave away $117 million in tax breaks, mostly for businesses that expand and for private health savings accounts. That was a choice lawmakers made, and had it not been for those decisions and a few others, according to the state's Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state would have had a surplus."

It's appropriate then to backtrack to 2008 and Walker's history of gilding the lily for his cronies while trying to break the back of working families becomes illuminated.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12372