Scotty's travels and poses > Scotty working on WEDC

Well, we found out on Friday what the "dramatic steps" would be from our fair gov'ner when it came to fixing the unaccountable and failing WEDC. The dramatic steps included revealing that WEDC is even more of an unaccountable disaster than we ever imagined.

As Democrats continued to knock him for secrecy and mismanagement at the state's job creation agency, Gov. Scott Walker on Friday announced he was hiring a temporary director from the private sector and a private company to search for a permanent chief executive.

Administration officials also disclosed that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. lost track of $69 million in loans — including $9 million in past-due loans — because no one was assigned to oversee them when the agency was created in 2011.

Officials also said they were auditing all corporation functions and that the agency's chief financial officer, Mike Klonsinski, resigned effective Friday.

Oooh, making the Number 3 guy fall on his sword for the team. That'll....do absolutely nothing. Especially given that he wasn't the guy who dropped the ball in the transition from the Department of Commerce in Summer 2011, when no one was assigned the duty at WEDC of figuring out where the loans went. Oh, and WEDC is paying a WMC Board member $10,000 a month as the temporary CEO, and taxpayers are putting out another $40,000 in a no-bid contract to QTI to do a national search for WEDC's 3rd CEO.

Of course, media wasn't able to ask follow-ups of Walker about this mess, even though he chairs the WEDC Board, because Walker was out of town.

"It's imperative that we have a strong leader [for WEDC]," Walker said, participating in the board meeting via telephone.

And what was Scotty out of town for that he couldn't make this important meeting in person? To attend "job creation" photo ops that included.... tax credits handed out by WEDC.

A year from now, Alta Resources could have as many as 1,700 people working at its downtown Neenah headquarters.

That would be nearly 400 more than the projected 1,310 people the provider of customer care and fulfillment outsourcing services expects to have on-site by the end of this year. Company representatives said it has hired more than 600 people the past six months, aided by $1 million in state credits issued through the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. (That's about $16,666 a job, folks) ...

Jim Bere, co-founder and CEO of Alta, said the additional workers to be added next year are sustainable positions.

“They definitely are,” he said Thursday after remarks made by Gov. Scott Walker, who visited the firm’s Neenah headquarters.

WEDC is under major heat for randomly handing out excessive tax credits without criteria or accountability, but Walker's still out in public propping up this corrupted, failing strategy. And I'm guessing Scotty didn't take questions about how and why this firm was chosen, either. Pathetic.

But hey, Scotty's a traveling man, and he's got appointments to keep. Like showing up at a fund-raiser and rally tomorrow in Missouri with GOP governor candidate Dave Spence. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this event is one day after the Packers' win in St. Louis. But if it's not a coincidence, it wouldn't be the first time Scotty's pulled that type of stunt, if you remember that Walker took a trip to see the Pack in Super Bowl XLV and made taxpayers shell out for his security detail, and never revealed who paid for his ticket and travel.

So while 30-year-old wonderboy (and lifetime GOP hack) Ryan Murray is allegedly going to work on figuring out where the missing $69 million in taxpayer-funded loans went to, WEDC Board Chair Scott Walker continues to bounce around the country and kiss up to oligarchs as if nothing sketchy is going on with the agency. Guess it tells you where Walker's real priorities are at- and it has nothing to do with actual, you know, WORK AND GOVERNING.