Walker politicizes Civil Service Reform, Ignored Warnings by his own Department!

Remember when Governor Scott Walker's reason for reforming the civil service rules focused like a laser on the "silliness" and "ridiculous stuff." You'd have to be crazy not to want to get rid of that:

"What we keep intact is the good. We keep intact the merit (hiring). We keep intact the just cause. What we get rid of is the silliness and the ridiculous stuff," Walker said.

Funny thing, his own Department of Personnel Management never found anything that bordered on silly or ridiculous. WSJ:

The personnel agency in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration privately blasted changes to the state’s civil service days after they were proposed, telling his office the overhaul would slow hiring, turn away qualified job applicants and trigger more lawsuits against the state, public records show … Walker has touted the law as a signature achievement … a bid to put state hiring more tightly under the governor’s control.

Walker: "This is really about bringing Wisconsin into the 21st century when it comes to recruitment and retention."

Walker ignored his own personnel agency because ideology trumps reality every time.

And proving once again just how bad Republicans are at governing, the civil service bill’s author never even saw the critical memo from the personnel department:

The bill’s sponsor, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, said he read the memo for the first time last week when it was provided to him by the State Journal.

Still, at the time he pushed the bill he did say...:

"We can't afford to be working with the same rules as we have for 100 years." 

Of course not, because things were so bad....?

Walker has always favored cronyism, so developing a civil service reform plan had to become easier to manipulate and game. Remember this...:

A Journal Sentinel Watchdog Report last weekend found that the administration made sure that the new get-tough top cop at the state Capitol got a hefty raise by moving him and his top deputy into phantom jobs for a couple of weeks before returning them to their real posts.

Now it's easier, and anything goes:

The memo is dated Oct. 16, or 15 days after the bill was introduced … undercuts several key contentions … that it will streamline and expedite the hiring of state workers. And it raises questions about the speed with which lawmakers planned to pass the law. “Notwithstanding such unpredictability, it is reasonable to forecast that hiring in the state generally will take longer (under the proposed changes) than it does under the current statute.”

The memo questions the bill’s shift to a resume-based hiring system for state employees, predicting it will “increase the number of qualified applicants inadvertently turned away and the number of unqualified applicants who inappropriately reach the interview stage.”

It also decries the law’s new standard for what is “just cause” to seriously discipline or fire a state worker, saying it is “unclear, limits the agencies in being able to administer discipline and creates the potential for increased litigation.”

Never taking responsibility, Walker decided to hide away from the media this one, or at least until he can come up with a way to blame former Gov. Doyle: 

Walker’s office initially asked to meet with the State Journal on Friday to discuss the memo but later declined to do so.