Walker claims we've got plenty of money to fix the roads. Don't buy it.

Yeah, I’ll take this statement with a heavy dose of skepticism.

In the midst of ongoing criticism of his transportation record, Gov. Scott Walker doubled down Tuesday, highlighting savings he says the state will see after finishing a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 39/90 one year early.

Walker also affirmed that the savings, along with extra money in his next budget, will cover a 50 percent increase in funding to county road programs he announced in La Crosse earlier in the week.

The state will save about $70 million by finishing a portion of Interstate 39/90 from Janesville to Edgerton in July 2020, Walker said. The entire interstate expansion project is 45 miles and will reconstruct the interstate in both directions from four to six lanes. Moving up a piece of the project will have a “cascading effect” to fund other transportation projects in the state.

Walker can SAY whatever he wants about that project’s timelines and its costs. But reality often is very different from that, and I’m not going to trust that interstate is ahead of schedule until the project is actually finished.

This was last year. No one bought your BS then, either.

After all, we’ve seen these tricks before, where the Walker Administration promised “magic savings” that allow them to afford certain highway projects, and then failed miserably when forced to show the receipts.

In a Feb. 7 letter to Democratic lawmakers, DOT official Dana Burmaster said that other road projects wouldn't be affected by the state taking on $102 million to $122 million in extra costs from seven additional projects to pave the way for the Foxconn factory. That's because the state managed to save $127 million last year on other projects, Burmaster wrote.

But the fiscal bureau report found that most of the savings last year and this year were used in other ways and covered just $32 million of the Foxconn costs.

The remaining money for reconditioning and resurfacing roads would total at least $1.53 billion over two years, or just slightly more than would have been available if lawmakers had not increased funding levels from the previous budget…

Even with $1.7 billion a year in funding, the share of state roads in "fair and above" condition would fall from 79% to 62% over the next 10 years, the report says. At current funding levels, an even lower percentage will be in good repair, it found.

In addition, Walker's claims of extra money available doesn’t seem to take into account all of the added needs that are the result of the many rainstorms that washed out roads throughout the state in the last month.

Working on this was not in the DOT's plans.

Simply put, this I-39/90 “announcement” happened because Walker is seeing polls that shows the average Wisconsinite knows their roads are falling apart, and that voters think he and WisGOP have no idea on how to come to up with the money to fix it other than borrowing us into oblivion. So now he’s trying to point to a highway plan that “is sufficient” when in fact things are being held together by glue and baling wire.

In fact, the only real DOT savings that have happened in recent years in Fitzwalkerstan aren’t due to efficiencies or accelerating projects, but by passing the buck down to local communities.

Wisconsin taxpayers will foot a bigger share of the bill to replace local bridges due to a new funding policy at the state Department of Transportation, county transportation officials say.

While the agency says the new policy spreads money to more projects around the state, some counties are seeing their costs increase by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

After years of bridge replacement delays due to a lack of state funding, the DOT has rolled out a new program called "Replace-In-Kind." It directs local governments applying for state bridge aid to design replacements to minimum state engineering standards based on current traffic. If the application qualifies, the state promises to pay for 80 percent of the replacement cost with local governments picking up the rest.

If counties or municipalities want to design bridges that go beyond the minimum standards, the "Replace-In-Kind" policy lets them do it but on their own dime.

It’s just another Walker shell game that allows Scotty to maintain his higher priority – staying on the good side of RW BubbleWorlders like Grover Norquist and the Kochs by claiming he didn’t raise taxes.

But taxes have been raised plenty at the local level, as shown by the tripling of wheel taxes since Walker took office (with more to come, as Dane and Eau Claire Counties are among the places with new taxes coming on in the next few months). And even with those higher taxes and costs of car repair. Wisconsin’s roads continue to be bad, as 31% of state roads were listed as being in “poor” condition in the most recent TRIP report, including more than half the roads in the Milwaukee and Wausau areas, and nearly half in the Madison area.

In his typically whine, Walker complained about TRIP’s motivations, and hinted that he should try to create his own reality on the subject.

“I fundamentally disagree with the reports that many allude to, reports paid for by the special interests that are running ads attacking us on transportation,” he said. “If the media is now using reports that are paid for by groups as the basis of their information, than maybe I should go out and create a group and pay for my own studies."

This is such a rich quote. Not only does this completely bought puppet of a governor complain about “special interests”, but we also know why Scotty would make up his own study. Because when a legitimate report was put together by the Wisconsin transportation Policy and Finance Commission in July 2013, Walker promptly ignored its calls for more taxes and fees to pay for the state’s many highway needs, and claimed he had a better idea. 5 years later, we have Scott-holes all over Wisconsin.

Then again, if I was Scott Walker, and I was down 7 points, burning through campaign funds and not getting them replaced, and faced with having to get my first real job, I’d be panicking and claiming anything too. Unfortunately for Scotty, facts and records do matter in the real world, and Wisconsinites aren’t going to buy any “good news” and "special plans" from this guy when it comes to the future of Wisconsin’s highways.