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Madison, Wisconsin — Following a May 2017 report that the agency failed to adequately report job numbers and has handed out nearly $10 million in bad loans, Gov. Walker’s Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) is undergoing another performance review today by the state legislature’s Joint Audit Committee.
Gov. Walker rushed to form WEDC in 2011 without a formal business plan and left out key financial safeguards that would go on to haunt the organization in future dealings. Walker’s deal with Kestrel Aircraft, made on the eve of his 2012 recall election, was revealed this week to have materialized only 25 jobs of its 655 job promise. In total, sixty percent of WEDC awardees have failed to meet their job creation goals.
“This is Walker’s WEDC in a nutshell — scramble to push a flashy deal through during a tough election for Walker, fail to follow through on the bare minimum standards of accountability and later taxpayers see the jobs and economic growth never show up,” said Martha Laning, Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “The Foxconn deal is following these same rushed, unaccountable patterns. This should concern us all.
“Walker needs to see the warning signs, whether it’s Foxconn’s lengthy history of broken promises, WEDC’s sheer ineptitude or this ‘bombshell’ in the Foxconn contract. If Walker really cared about these jobs, he’d take the time and energy to do this deal right. These rushed, uncertain negotiations show that Walker cares more about his own political ambitions than securing good, stable jobs for generations of Wisconsinites to come.”
