Walker can't misdirect from prison scandals and coverups. Even Fitz and Vos admit it.

I was wondering why our flailing Governor was turning up the Twitter heat on stupid, rehashed issues in the last few days. Well, late Friday we found out why - it was a misdirection play from a legitimate scandal that once again shows the Walker administration's neglect and cover-ups at the state's juvenile prison facility at Lincoln Hills.

Gov. Scott Walker's administration waited more than two years to tell the state Board of Nursing about a 14-year-old inmate who nearly died when nurses didn't get him to a doctor for three days, according to state agencies.

Once the complaint was filed in July, the Board of Nursing — which itself is overseen by the Walker administration — waited seven weeks to process it, according to the board. Officials entered the complaint into the board's electronic system on Tuesday, the first business day after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an article about the February 2016 incident.

Registered nurses at the state's juvenile prison, Lincoln Hills School for Boys, gave the teen Sierra Mist, Gatorade and crackers for days when he was repeatedly vomiting because his appendix was at risk of bursting. A doctor who performed emergency surgery on him at the time called the nurses' actions inexcusable and said they should have known to get him to a doctor three days earlier.

A spokesman for Walker's Department of Corrections wouldn't say why the agency held off seeking the review for 30 months. Likewise, Board of Nursing officials did not explain why the board waited a month and a half to process the complaint.

And that comes on the heels of another Journal-Sentinel report which tallied up the costs of other screw-ups and negligence at the youth prison facility.

Lawsuits over the problems at Wisconsin’s juvenile prison complex have cost the state $20.6 million so far and those costs will continue to rise — possibly by large sums if some cases aren't resolved in the state's favor.

The facility for more than three years has been under criminal investigation for prisoner abuse and child neglect. If charges are issued, that could open the state to more legal exposure from lawsuits.

In addition to the $18.9 million settlement made earlier this year with the family of young woman who wasn't checked on as she tried to hang herself in her jail cell and ended up with brain damage. Much of that will cost taxpayers in future years as insurance costs go up for all state agencies.

We probably should have seen these stories coming earlier in the week, when
GOP Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald lost the plot in a media event that was supposed to try to lift Walker's prospects up.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s main goal in a conference call was to attack state schools Superintendent Tony Evers — Walker’s opponent this fall — for not doing more to advance legislation making it easier to revoke teaching licenses when teachers watch pornography. But in response to a question, Fitzgerald said Walker’s Department of Corrections should have done more to stem abuses at Lincoln Hills School for Boys.

“Obviously, Lincoln Hills has been a mess,” the Juneau Republican said. “It’s been a mess for some time. So, often times when you read these articles (about problems there), I’m not necessarily shocked, but very disappointed that there wasn’t more action taken directly by DOC at the time.”…

And whose job is it to oversee the Department of Corrections and give a damn as the stories about bad things happening at Lincoln Hills and Copper Hills kept piling up? THE GOVERNOR OF WISCONSIN. Instead, Walker chose to ignore and/or bury the issue, to try to avoid public exposure and possible political damage that would result.



Perhaps the worst example of this happened in 2012, when an inmate was sexually assaulted and beaten at Lincoln Hills, but staff did not get him treatment when the assaults happened, waiting until a school basketball game ended a few hours later.

A Racine County judge who learned of the matter sent a letter to Walker a month later, telling him staff there acted with "indifference" in an incident he considered "sordid" and "inexcusable." Walker aides did not alert the governor to the incident, according to the governor's office.

No one was disciplined.

Fitzgerald said he wasn't aware of the incident, which was first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2016. He suggested it was hard to know when the governor and prison leaders knew details about the matter and said it should have been addressed earlier by lower-level staff.

Between Fitz's gaffe on Walker's negligence on Lincoln Hills, and Assembly Speaker Robbin' Vos admitting he was "shocked" that Walker refuses to visit any of the state's prisons to observe operations and talk to employees, and I'm starting to think that even these guys are done with Gov Dropout's act. And that they wouldn't shed a lot of tears if Walker were to get blown out of office in 8 1/2 weeks.