Walker transportation spending of $404,250 + for work not done tanks Federal funding help!!!

Walker's Bad Management: Scott Walker is trying to paper over reality, thinking his purely political right-wing fantasy can actually replace real-world oversight and management of our state's massive economy. Here's how Walker saw himself in 2011:

"This wasn't about some wild political agenda ... I just came in trying to, like a small business owner, I saw a problem, saw a solution, I tried to fix it."

But Walker has never worked outside of government, which makes him the real thing, a career politician.

So the Walker administrations transportation bumbling and deception tanked any chance of us getting desperately needed Federal funding for road work. And I'm guessing, Republicans voters won't blame Walker one bit, rewarding him at the polls. Tribal-like partisan politics showing no sign of slowing down.

JS: As a percentage of the nearly $200 million budget for rebuilding a chunk of Wisconsin’s busiest freeway, $404,250 might seem insignificant ... money ... paid by Wisconsin taxpayers for work that was never done? And what if the state knew it when the bill was paid?

That’s what happened when contractors for the Milwaukee Zoo Interchange project double billed the state for 15,000 cubic yards of gravel, enough to help pave one lane of highway for five miles. Although a project engineer with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation discovered the discrepancy in advance, and alerted supervisors, those in charge insisted the contractor be paid the additional money anyway, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has found. The federal agency had initially agreed to cover 50 percent of the cost for the gravel.

The result of this knowing abuse and frivolous spending of taxpayer money?

When regulators at the Federal Highway Administration learned of the payment, the agency made a rare decision to withdraw federal funding that had been allocated for the work, saying justification for the expenditure “seems inconsistent” and “makes no sense,” according to documents obtained by the Journal Sentinel through state and federal open records laws. As a result, state taxpayers had to cover the cost. And, the same bidding arrangement that allowed for the double payment was used for dozens of other projects, raising the opportunity for additional misspending ... Yet nobody sought to recover the funds. And nobody has been held accountable for the waste.