County Board

Milwaukee County Exec Scott Walker's budget vetoes belong in Bizarro World. Cory Liebmann points out that Walker had a lot of terrible things to say about Gov. Jim Doyle's use (Walker would say abuse) of the veto power. But Walker went beyond anything Doyle ever did.

Technically, he didn't use the so-called Frankenstein veto, which combines words from different sentences to make a new one. What he used was the Vanna White veto, crossing out letters -- lots of them -- to make new words.

The most extreme example, from the Journal Sentinel:

... [H]is veto restoring privatization of 30 skilled worker jobs pruned two full pages of text to extract letters and spaces that created this phrase: "restore contract funds." Walker said that was sufficient to do what he originally intended.

I think it's safe to say that no one has ever vetoed anything quite as creatively, or probably quite as illegally, regardless of the county corporation counsel's defense of what Walker did.

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So the County Board turns down Scott Walker's privatization agenda goes down in flames, including his plan to bail out the transit system by leasing the airport.

Are we surprised?

Sure - - Midway Airport is being leased, and so are toll roads around the country, but people figure that the lease-holders want to make a profit, so all the fees and costs will go up - - parking, landing charges, store leases - - and in the end, county residents will still pay and pay and pay.

Walker's tenure as County Exec has been marked by years phony budgeting - - bogus revenue estimates filling service lines with dollars that were never going to arrive, forcing the inevitable call for more service cuts and budget wailing by Walker, year in and year out.

It's so tiresome.

Can we get a real executive as County Executive, please?

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