Robbin' Vos and WisGOPs care about redirecting money. Not saving it.

Interesting article this week from the Capitol Times which showed that Robbin’ Vos’s highly paid, expanded staff main job doesn't seem to be checking up on potholes back in the 63rd Assembly district. Instead, they are using our money to harrass and try to embarrass Governor Evers.

The reporting began after Vos, in early 2019, added new staffers to his office, including three aides to former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The move was criticized by a top Democratic leader as an attempt to launch a “shadow caucus” to take on the Evers administration.

“I don’t want to just assume whatever the executive branch tells us is automatically accurate," Vos told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last January. "I want to have someone double check it.”

By itself, asking for information is no biggie to me, as it’s worthwhile to be doing policy research and figuring out things for yourself no matter who is governor. And you’d want to know what the executive departments are doing with taxpayer dollars and current programs.

But it begs the question why Robbin’ decided he only needed these extra, taxpayer-funded staffers after Evers gave Scott Walker the boot in 2018. And the real answer to that question comes later in the article.

The Cap Times was first made aware of the activity after One Wisconsin Now shared a copy of a February research assistant training presentation assigned by Vos’ office. The 11-slide presentation walked Assembly staffers through the process of “monitoring state agencies” by keeping an eye on recruitment, contracts, grants, lawsuits filed against a department, stakeholder meetings, federal interactions, audits, social media accounts and more...

Two subsequent records requests filed with Vos’ office by the Cap Times uncovered a series of weekly department reports by Assembly staffers, with some dating back to February 2019, as well as emails about the activity between committee clerks and the speaker’s staff.

The length of the documents, which follow a two-and-a-half page template, tend to differ, week-to-week and between agencies. Some staffers regularly included charts or graphs showcasing vacancies, for example, while others listed and linked to every retweet their agency’s Twitter account sent out in a week. Others still submitted five- or six-page reports while different staffers filed two-page summaries, according to the records.

After compiling the reports, staffers emailed them to a corresponding point person or persons in Vos’ office, depending on their policy area or committee division, records show.

Sooooo punchable.

Your tax dollars at work, Wisconsin. And it illustrates yet again that for Robbin’ (Foxconn is in My District) Vos and other Republicans in 2020, “fiscal conservatism” really doesn't have a lot to do with saving money.

Another example of this will come next week, when VP Mike Pence will come to the Capitol for a photo op/BS event to promote Betsy DeVos’s “Jesus Rode a Dinosaur” schools.

Vice President Mike Pence will visit the Wisconsin State Capitol next week to promote private school vouchers and other alternatives to traditional public schools.

Pence will deliver a speech during a noon rally Jan. 28 in the Capitol rotunda recognizing National School Choice Week, an event organized by conservative groups and school choice advocates that is expected to draw as many as 800 people…..

The event was also organized by Hispanics for School Choice, School Choice Wisconsin, Wisconsin Federation for Children, Americans for Prosperity and No Better Friend Corp., which was created by former GOP U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson.

Oh, so it's nothing more than a taxpayer-funded rally backed by RW grifter organizations that uses kids as human shields. Cool, cool.

By the way, what has happened to taxpayer funding of vouchers in Wisconsin since the Age of Fitzwalkerstan began in 2011? It has nearly tripled, from less than $131 million in 2011, to $386 million next year. This includes increases of 12.5% this year and 13.5% next year. Our public schools sure aren’t getting double-digit percentage boosts in state aid in this budget, and in fact, they are having increasing amounts of money taken from them because of the voucher scam.

That money-funneling happens if the kids in voucher schools have never attended a public school in their home district, and property taxes have been raised to make up the difference for that reduced state aid. In fact, one item Governor Evers might want to look into with our extra tax revenues is reducing the $158.5 million being taken from public schools and use some of that money to reduce property taxes along with allowing those schools a bit more flexibility to use that money. Let's see the WisGOPs have to defend keeping the voucher theft to the Wisconsin voters, because they rarely get asked about it.

This cycle of money going out of publics and into unaccountable vouchers will continue each year that Robbin’ Vos, Mike Pence, and other GOPs use their Dirty DeVos Donations to stay in power. And Dems need to be calling this out as Pence, Vos and the rest of these puppets for RW oligarchs have their fake event at the Capitol on Tuesday.

Dems should also point out what has been obvious throughout the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. Whether it's Robbin' Vos adding political staff at taxpayer expense, adding tens of millions of dollars a year to a voucher program that has done nothing to improve K-12 education, or Fox-cons and other WEDC giveaways, WisGOPs don't really care about saving taxpayer dollars. They just want to use their power to send those dollars to their friends and donors and disadvantage everyone else in the process.